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POLITICS 


FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE 


THE PHRONOCRAT 


- BY 

SLACK WORTHINGTON 



BOSTON 

ARENA PUBLISHING COMPANY 



Copyrighted, 1895, 

BY 

H. S. WORTHINGTON. 


All Rights Reserved. 


• • « • • ■ € 



Arena Press 










CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER I. 

Wealth necessary to progress—Its accumulation for rein¬ 
vestment not objectionable—Phronocracy, its principles 
—Movable wealth cannot be justly taxed—Taxes paid by 
users of wealth—Necessity for preventing excessive pri¬ 
vate use of wealth—Improvements cannot be stimulated 
by taxation—Mr. Tilden’s proposition—What the state 
should do,.9 


CHAPTER II. 

Competition or co-operation in society necessary ; which is 
preferable ?—Compromise between them not advisable— 
Production depends on energy—Greater production 
under competition than co-operation—No unnecessary 
energy expended under competition—Co-operation not to 
be mistaken for specialization,.37 

CHAPTER III. 

Individual rights—All things and processes natural—What 
are natural media ?—Development of life—The rights of 
living things—Labor necessary to possess all media—Bet¬ 
ter that all media be owned—All rights relative, none 
absolute—Adaptation necessary to all changes—The poor 
not oppressed by the rich—Utilization of other forms of 
energy required—Consumption and waste cause poverty 
—Over-production in quantity tends toward betterment 
of quality,.53 




4 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER IV. 

Artificial things are natural tilings moved—No unnatural 
things—The state, what is it ?—Co-operation means retro¬ 
gression—Habitability of earth by living forms—Social 
centripetal and centrifugal forces—Co-operation as ap¬ 
plied to railways and coal mines—No gain of consequence 
to the people—Not enough wealth to mate all comfort¬ 
able—Wealth must increase faster than population— 
Trusts natural, and not hurtful—Governmental functions 
might be curtailed—Post-office under private control— 
Desirableness of avoiding business interferences—Cumu¬ 
lative residential taxation not hurtful—Poverty will be 
mitigated, not cured, .88 

CHAPTER V. 

Suffrage—Should be based on residential rent or taxation— 
Representation should be similarly apportioned—Distinc¬ 
tion between residential rent and taxation—Inequality 
and injustice in United States Senate—Bicameral and 
unicameral legislative bodies—Female suffrage will 
cause loss—It will prevent specialization of function—It 
will be non-effectual in causing better conditions, . 122 

CHAPTER VI. 

Money, one standard—For the present gold—Circulating 
medium on fixed property valuations—Government not 
properly a bank of issue—Quantity should be based on 
business needs—Direct taxation renders possible fixed 
property basis—Objections to governmental issue, . 148 

CHAPTER VII. 

Practical application of Phronocracy—Wealth supports all 
progress—If invested for interest gain, accumulations are 
beneficial to all—Fitness against unfitness as applied to 
wealth and poverty—Artificially provided work not bene- 


CONTENTS. 


5 


flcial—Long hours of labor and short hours—Interference 
not beneficial—More facility and work, the more wealth 
and comfort—Self-supporting immigration beneficial— 
Any co-operative system must be world-wide—The three 
essential measures proposed by Phronocracy—Taxation 
on fixed property only, the only just tax—Cumulative 
taxation on estates privately enjoyed will not curtail ac¬ 
cumulation—How collected—Voting and representation 
based upon actual contribution to government the only 
just system—Foe to reformation a friend to revolu¬ 
tion, . ... 161 




PREFACE. 


The accompanying pages contain a revision, 
abridgment, and alterations of a work on 
Phronocracy published several years ago. 
The essential features are changed to the ex¬ 
tent of making the effect of the measures that 
are proposed less drastic and their application 
less complicated. The essence of the proposi¬ 
tions herein set forth is, that mankind can be 
substantially benefited only by the increased 
production and conservation of wealth; that 
wealth is necessary to the progress of civil¬ 
ization, and, it matters not by whom owned, 
provided it is reinvested and not consumed, 
mankind is benefited thereby. The object 
is to suggest a plan by which increased con¬ 
servation can be encouraged, which will result 
in a reduction of the rates of interest and, con¬ 
sequently, in a betterment of the condition of 


8 


PEEFACE. 


mankind by making access to wealth easier and 
cheaper. This, it is claimed, is better for so¬ 
ciety than any system of distribution or co-op¬ 
eration such as is contemplated by Socialism, 
Populism, Communism, and the like. 


POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 


CHAPTER I. 


Wealth necessary to progress—Its accumulation for rein¬ 
vestment not objectionable—Plironocracy, its princi¬ 
ples—Movable wealth cannot be justly taxed—Taxes 
paid by users of wealth—Necessity for preventing exces¬ 
sive private use of wealth— Improvements cannot be 
stimulated by taxation—Mr. Tilden’s proposition—What 
the state should do. 

It is held that the accumulation of wealth 
is the only means by which mankind can be 
raised to a higher standard of living; that the 
progress from barbarism to civilization is based 
on accumulated wealth. 

It is better for humanity that said wealth 
shall be reinvested for further gain, that is, for 
interest, than that it shall be distributed or 
extravagantly or ostentatiously used or con¬ 
sumed; and a plan is suggested by which said 
reinvestment for further gain will be encour¬ 
aged. 

It is claimed also that the wealthy men of 



10 


POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 


the world are substantially the custodians or 
conservators of the wealth of the world, and 
that, as the masses are now constituted, 
such wealth would not be accumulated and 
conserved by the masses. The masses have the 
same right of access to all wealth, except that 
which is privately used , that the classes have, 
after paying therefor the current rates of in¬ 
terest, which always tend to be less as wealth 
per capita is greater. It is better for society 
that the masses have access at the interest price 
than that there should be no accumulated 
wealth to have access to, which there would not 
be if all the wealth that is produced were con¬ 
sumed, as the largest part, if not all, that goes 
to the masses is. 

Phronocracy is a word derived from the 
Greek <ppovt$, meaning prudence, knowledge , or 
understanding , and xpdros, meaning strength . 

It is coined to express a meaning between 
Democracy and Plutocracy. A work on this 
subject written some years ago advocated cu¬ 
mulative taxation on all property ; but experi¬ 
ence and further insight has suggested that 
such a plan would be too complex in operation 
and too drastic in effect, and would tend to 
reduce accumulations of wealth ; which would 
be injurious to society. 


POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 11 

It is now proposed that Phronocracy shall 
signify a system of polity or government based 
substantially on the following principles, viz.: 

1st. All taxation shall be direct and for 
revenue only, on fixed property only, at its 
valuation for use, and to be assessed and col¬ 
lected in each congressional district or as 
many thereof as are required. 

2d. On fixed property held for exclusive 
private use a cumulative additional tax shall 
be imposed of a rate per hundred equal to the 
one-millionth part of its value. 

3d. No man shall vote unless he can read 
and write the English language and pays 
$100 per year in residential rent or $20 
per year in residential taxation, or some other 
agreed minimum ; and each man shall have 
as many votes as his payment of residen¬ 
tial rent or taxation is a full multiple of these 
amounts. 

4th. The circulating medium of the country 
shall be based on its fixed property and be 
redeemable in gold coin only. 

5th. Nothing shall be done by the Federal 
Government that the local authorities are com¬ 
petent to do, and nothing by any governmental 
power that individuals can do for themselves. 
S. J. Tilden. 


12 


POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 


6th. The proper purpose of government is 
protection against foreign aggression as long 
as separate governments exist, and against 
domestic insurrection as long as a tendency 
toward that exists. 

7th. All systems of governmental or co¬ 
operative ownership or management of busi¬ 
ness affairs shall be discouraged. 

It is not here proposed to change anything 
radically , but simply to suggest measures for 
relief along: lines from which alone it is thought 
relief can come. As to details of application 
or operation, it is not proposed that the system 
shall be absolutely rigid or unadaptable. It is 
sought to establish these propositions: 

1st. That in principle no tax has any proper 
existence except to secure revenue for the 
maintenance of the thing or system desired to 
be supported; that it cannot stimulate nor 
cause to exist any social function without reac¬ 
tionary damage equal to the advantage sought 
to be accomplished, and in addition thereto a 
necessary loss in the process of application and 
operation. Most of the wealth of the world 
is fixed proyerty. Movables represent a com¬ 
paratively small part of the total wealth. 
Shares of stock are simply evidences of owner¬ 
ship in property, most of which is fixed. If 


POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 13 

the property represented by shares of stock is 
taxed, the shares themselves cannot rightfully 
be taxed. Bonds, if taxed, renders it unjust to 
tax the property bonded or mortgaged except 
to the extent of its value in excess of the mort¬ 
gage. Chattels or movable property is liable 
to be shifted from place to place, so that it is 
impossible to determine at what place taxes on 
it shall he imposed and collected. Circulating 
media and all lands of securities are secreted 
and moved about so that their ownership can¬ 
not be always definitely ascertained, hence, 
being only partially taxed, this taxation is dis¬ 
criminating and unjust. If fixed property 
alone is taxed, it can always he assessed, and, 
once established, adjustment will cause equity. 
The collection of such taxes is much less costly 
and difficult. 

Had nothing but fixed property ever been 
subjected to taxation, it would have been 
owned with knowledge of that fact, and rents 
and interest would have been adjusted thereto. 

Now, in the event of a change to that system, 
equity would demand an adjustment as to all 
existing contracts ; thereafter, as it would have 
done originally, adjustment will take care of 
itself. 

This means that existing mortgages now 


14 


POLITICS FOP PKTJDENT PEOPLE. 


subject to taxation, if released, shall suffer a 
reduction in interest equal to the increased tax 
thereby imposed on the property securing said 
mortgage. 

It means that existing leases, given when 
fixed property paid only its part of the tax, 
should be subject to readjustment. All trans¬ 
actions made subsequently to the adoption of 
the system would adjust themselves by altering 
the rate of interest or terms of the lease as 
individuals might agree. 

Merchandise and all other movables now sub¬ 
jected to taxation, in practice pay so little that 
they need not be taken into consideration at all. 

2d. It is also desired to establish the fact 
that accumulated property that is reinvested 
for interest is a benefit to society, no matter by 
whom owned, and that only property that is 
squandered or held for exclusive private enjoy¬ 
ment , such as residences, private parks, country 
seats, seaside villas, and the like, deprives 
society of anything beneficial to society. Such 
properties, however, it is admitted that men have 
a right to own, but it proposed that on such 
an additional cumulative tax shall be imposed, 
equal, on the hundred, to one-millionth of their 
assessed value or some other cumulate rate. 
The reason for this is obvious. A man accum- 


POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 


15 


ulating a hundred million dollars might invest 
it all in residential palaces, for example, except 
such portion as would yield him an income 
sufficient to enable him to luxuriate on his 
private estate. Such an individual would be 
an unworthy custodian of wealth, because he 
refused access to it at current interest or rental 
rates ; furthermore, such an one would accumu¬ 
late nothing, thereby failing to increase the 
world’s wealth, on which increase civilization 
depends. A few rich men might even now, as 
wealth is to-day accumulated, practically prevent 
further accumulation by privately enjoying and 
not reinvesting the value of their estates. 

It is estimated to-day that about 30,000 
men own half the wealth of the United States, 
that is to say, that about 30,000 men own 
about 30 billions of wealth. 

This is not hurtful to society if said men 
give access to their wealth at current interest 
or rental rates; but if they should gather in 
for private enjoyment, for ostentation or dis¬ 
play, three-fourths of their wealth, deriving 
income sufficient to support their luxury 
from the other fourth, which would be ample, 
such a course would be injurious to society, 
because it would tie up non-productively almost 
half of the wealth of the country. 


16 POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 

This would increase interest and rental 
rates, and also prevent so large an accumula¬ 
tion, if not all further accumulation, because 
the wealth offered for interest would be so 
small. It is to prevent the possibility of such 
a result that the cumulative tax on property 
held ior private enjoyment is suggested. It is 
of course very improbable that any result on 
this line will ever become very oppressive, but 
it might. If it did it would cause revolution. 

It might be asked, why not apply this to city 
lots not improved ? That is unnecessary, and 
would be too drastic, and likely tend to reduce 
accumulation, a result which must be avoided in 
any case. The owner of a city lot is ahnost 
always anxious to improve it whenever he can 
do so to advantage. To say to him, We will 
increase your tax unless you will improve your 
lot, he would reply, saying, What constitutes im¬ 
provements ? Shall I put a log shanty on it, or 
shall I only put a fence around it ? No, you 
shall build a fine hotel on it, or an hotel not so 
fine, or a factory or a barn, or some other 
improvement. Obviously this would result in 
confusion, chaos, and loss, as well as imprac¬ 
ticability. To say to him that he shall be 
taxed more if he does not improve is to say to 
him, you shall improve , which is to say to 


POLITICS FOE, PEUDENT PEOPLE. IT 

him, you shall improve in a certain way , con¬ 
formable to certain conditions, and at certain 
cost, otherwise no definite end is reached. 
Obviously improvements can only be prompted 
and regulated by demand and conditions. To 
tax a man to force him to build some kind of 
a house would be useless, and certainly, 
unless something more definite could be im¬ 
posed, it would be folly. Furthermore, it 
would be an injustice to the owner. If he 
should build a house ahead of demand he 
could not rent it to advantage, hence the 
wealth thus locked up would be of less benefit 
to society than if otherwise invested. If he 
could rent it to advantage he would build it 
as soon as he could, without any tax directed 
to that end, which tax would fail of its purpose 
and cause reactionary damage greater than 
the actionary benefit that is sought. 

To tax a man to discourage him from ab¬ 
sorbing too large a part of his wealth for 
private enjoyment or ostentatious living is 
quite another tiling from taxing him to force 
him to improve ahead of natural demand for 
improvement. 

It may*be said that to prevent men from 
enjoying fine private parks and country-seats 
and villas would discourage decoration, beauti- 


18 


POLITICS POIl PIIUDENT PEOPLE. 


fication, and art. Perhaps so to some extent, 
but under the tax proposed he could yet enjoy 
a wide range for such indulgence. Wealth 
for the patronage of art could well be ex¬ 
pended in palatial buildings that are offered 
for interest. People who are able to do so 
will pay to be in contact with an environ¬ 
ment of art and luxury, just as those less able 
will pay for the best comforts they can secure. 

Monopoly is really not seriously objection¬ 
able if the thing monopolized is offered for 
use by society even at the highest price the 
traffic will bear. This is the limit of monop¬ 
olistic so-called extortion, except the monopoly 
of exclusive private enjoyment of wealth. So- 
called monopolistic exaction to the limit the 
traffic will bear is seldom imposed by these 
so-called monopolies, because it pays them 
better to be more reasonable, because being 
more reasonable stimulates use . These con¬ 
ditions usually bring charges within the 
bounds of reason when time is given for ad¬ 
justment. But, be the gain of a so-called 
monopolist what it may, unless said gain is 
privately enjoyed, it is reinvested in the crea¬ 
tion of other kinds of wealth, and %tliat wealth 
adds to the sum total of wealth, and thus re¬ 
duces the price of access to wealth or, rather, 


POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 


19 


it reduces interest. Furthermore, these vast 
aggregations of wealth are needed to carry out 
vast enterprises. We want these vast enter¬ 
prises because they redound to our comfort and 
convenience. 

The more we have of them the more cheaply 
we can use them. Furthermore, vast wealth en¬ 
ables vast facility to be introduced and used, 
and this tends toward cheaper production, 
which could not otherwise have been secured. 
The advocate of co-operation may justly claim 
that, if this is so, then the aggregation of 
all wealth into the national employment shop 
would produce still better results and cheaper 
production. To this it may be answered, 
not so, because then stimulation to exertion 
upon the part of the best is curbed, hence 
their exertion is curbed, production tends 
towards the less production of the worst, the 
average is made lower, less wealth is produced, 
hence less can be consumed without producing 
bankruptcy, hence a lower standard of living. 

But the co-operators may yet say, No, stimu¬ 
lation to effort would not be curbed. Then, 
be it answered, if not curbed it must be in¬ 
creased, for it could not remain precisely the 
same. Is it reasonable to assume that stimu¬ 
lation to effort would be increased when every 


20 POLITICS POE PKUDENT PEOPLE. 

worthless vagabond and tramp would share in 
the fruit of that effort ? Rather is it not cer¬ 
tain that it would he decreased, and very largely 
so, too? 

But if increased, how much would it be in¬ 
creased ? If decreased at all it would be damag¬ 
ing to society, and it would have to be increased 
very much to offset the loss in contribution 
to the general fund and distribution from it. 
Also it would have to be increased very much 
if enough were provided to give a higher av¬ 
erage standard of living, which is the end in 
view. As to this, more will be said later. 

3d. It is desired to establish the principle 
that suffrage is too cheap and too general; 
that the only way to “ reform ” the ballot is to 
re-form it, which means that it must be extended 
or curtailed. Since it cannot be extended, if 
reformed it must be curtailed. 

To be fully able to participate in the govern¬ 
ment of society a man should be a thorough 
scientific sociologist. That is impossible, be¬ 
cause few if any men are thus qualified. All 
we can do is to try to make things better than 
they are, and only as much better as is feasible 
at the present time and in the present state of 
society. Society is an aggregation of indi¬ 
viduals, hence it can become perfect only as its 


POLITICS POR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 21 

units become perfect. What we have is sub¬ 
stantially the consensus of wliat we all want. 
A few think they have plans by which the 
whole could be made better ; if so, it is the 
duty of these few to try to convince as many 
others as they can. This is the road to better¬ 
ment, and the only road. Men are usually sin¬ 
cere in putting forth their propaganda. 

It is claimed that to be a voter a man should 
be able to read and write English and pay 
$100 per year residential rent or $20 per 
year residential taxation, or in about that 
ratio, and that each shall have as many votes 
as their payments respectively are full multiples 
of these amounts. It is not claimed that this 
will make a perfect system, but that it will be 
an improvement on the present system, and 
about all that could be hoped for now. More 
as to this later. 

4th. That fixed property is the proper basis 
for circulating media, and gold coin the only 
proper standard of value at the present time. 

The proposition of Mr. Tilden, “ That noth¬ 
ing shall be done by the general government 
that the local authorities are competent to do, 
and nothing by any governmental power that 
individuals can do for themselves ,” suggests 
the question, What can individuals do for 


22 POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 

themselves f On this point there will always 
be many men of many minds. 

Individuals cannot do, in one place or time, 
what they might do in another place or time. 
The same is true as to the state. No absolutely 
fixed limitation covering all places and all periods 
can be agreed upon. It is here advised that the 
tendency be towards individual performance 
and away from state performance ; hence, to 
the proposition of Mr. Tilden is added that, as 
nearly as is possible, the state shall do nothing 
from which it is practicable to get arevenue . 
This means that all things from which it is 
practicable to get a revenue shall be done by 
individuals. Here again arises a chance for 
differences of opinion as to ichat is practicable 
and what is not ? It is not practicable for 
revenue to be obtained from people moving 
about in the thoroughfare of a city, hence the 
control of these is a public function beyond 
cavil. From the protection given by police¬ 
men and firemen it might be practicable to 
derive a revenue, but this is remotely practi¬ 
cable only. A private company might engage 
these men and guarantee protection for certain 
payments, but it would be almost impracticable 
to get property-holders to contribute their 
rightful share for said service; hence this also 


POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 


28 


is a public function coming within the proper 
sphere of the state’s duty. The same is more 
obviously true as to an army and navy. Now, 
outside of these duties, there are few things 
from which revenue cannot be practically ob¬ 
tained in proportion to the service rendered. 
All other things, it will be found, private 
individuals can do,-and do well. Believers in 
co-operation would put the case just the other 
way. But when the state does service for 
which compensation is directly given, the state 
engages in business, in exchange from which 
it is either going to gain or lose. Either it is 
better for the state to do business or it is not. 
If it is so to engage its functions, where is it 
to begin, and where end? If the state is to 
supply commodities such as water, gas, electric 
energy, and the like, it must first tax the in¬ 
dividuals so as to get the means with which to 
secure the plant and machinery for said supply ; 
and if it is to transport people over municipal 
thoroughfares, it must likewise tax the people, 
so as to secure the plant and rolling-stock. 
The case then stands thus: The individuals 
who might do all this business on the basis of 

o 

reward to effort, which prompts greater effi¬ 
ciency, are forced to yield up a fund sufficient 
to secure the plant and appliances for the per- 


24 


POLITICS FOP PRUDENT PEOPLE. 


formance of the business by tlie public on the 
basis of no reward or effort, which prompts 
less efficiency. In other words, the state forces 
the individuals out of the business, and also 
forces them to provide the means by which the 
state may go into the business. It is not the 
function of the state to get rich or to get poor. 
What it needs for its proper duties can be ob¬ 
tained by taxation. Those who favor the free 
performance by the state or municipality of 
divers duties, such as transportation and the like, 
as many co-operators do, are of course received 
with favor by the masses, because, to the 
limit of their comprehension, they are receiving 
something from nothing, which cannot be done 
at all, nor “for” nothing very long. This 
apparently free public service must be paid for 
and supported ; if not by fares collected from 
those who ride, it must be supported by taxa¬ 
tion, which, other things equal, means higher 
rent and higher interest, and less accumulation 
of wealth. If simply made self-sustaining, the 
masses yet lose the interest on the cost. The 
gain now accruing to private owners by good 
management, would be very little if distributed 
among all, and even this gain would be over¬ 
come by increased rents and interest. The dif¬ 
ficulty of determining what the public should do 


POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 25 

and what it should not do is perhaps greater in 
municipalities than elsewhere, and it goes with¬ 
out saying that maladministration is greater 
in municipalities than elsewhere. When, hy 
time and circumstance, there has been brought 
about an adjustment, or what appears to he an 
adjustment, to a certain set of conditions, he 
they almost universally admitted to be bad, 
nevertheless aversion to innovation and the ob¬ 
duracy of habit resist changes even for what 
is almost universally admitted to be good. 

The idea that municipalities should operate 
certain enterprises “ at cost ” receives much 
favor. “ Cost ” to a municipality is usually equal 
to the price plus the profit of a private enter¬ 
prise. 

No enterprise should be operated “at cost ” 
but all should be operated at a profit. Why? 
Because the “p) ro fit ” represents labor product 
that is gained. If this gain inures to private 
citizens the greater part of it is conserved and 
reinvested. This increases wealth and reduces 
interest. 

It should ever be remembered by good citi¬ 
zens, whether owners of wealth or not, that the 
interest charge is the only difference between 
access by non-owners and access by owners. 
Therefore, when we seek to operate enterprises 


26 POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 

by the public “ at cost ” so as to avoid profit, 
we do but prevent that much wealth from be¬ 
ing conserved and reinvested for use at con¬ 
tinuously lower interest rates. 

If all enterprises were operated u at cost” 
there would be practically no conservation of 
wealth, hence no progress, and if no progress 
then there must be decay. If this is true of 
all enterprises, it is true of the 2 )ar l s that g° 
to make all . 

Franchises for the performance of certain 
service should be granted on the best business 
bases and terms, the future as well as the pres¬ 
ent being considered, that are possible at the 
time . This done and the community will pros¬ 
per more than if public service is done at cost. 

Had the policy of municipal government 
years ago been to permit nothing except the 
care of the thoroughfare and police protection 
to be performed by the public, there would 
now have been an adjustment to that system 
from which any change would be most vigor¬ 
ously opposed. In the meantime much wealth 
would have been accumulated, by better private 
control, that has been squandered by worse 
public control. 

Had private companies undertaken to supply 
a water system, a sewerage system, a lighting 


POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 


27 


system, and an intramural transportation system, 
yes, to conduct all wharfage business and ferry 
business, municipalities would have grown up 
conformable to these conditions, and rates of 
taxation, hence rents , would have averaged less. 
Many of these things were undertaken and now 
are managed by private enterprise, and these 
enterprises work well. True, the owners have in 
many cases grown rich, but a major part of 
their accumulations have been reinvested, thus 
making wealth greater and interest less. But, 
say the co-operation, would you have the water- 
supply of a great city subject to the caprice of 
a private company or companies, thus putting 
it in their power to famish the people at their 
merciless whim ? Had the bread supply of a 
great city been, for one hundred years or more, 
administered by the public, the co-operator 
would, with the same expressions of horror, ask 
the same question. Would you have the docks 
and wharves, at which great ships carrying the 
produce of the world now land, subject to the 
same merciless caprice and whimsical private 
domination? 

If for a hundred years or more railway- 
depots, at which land trains carrying produce 
much more necessary and valuable, had been 
operated by the public, the co-operator would 


28 


POLITICS FOP PPUDENT PEOPLE. 


contemplate their discontinuance with much 
greater forebodings. Yet there are many cities 
dependent upon train-supply where few are 
dependent upon ships and wharves. If the 
public would he endangered by private owner¬ 
ship of wharves, why is not the public endan¬ 
gered to a much greater extent by private own¬ 
ership of vessels that land at these wharves, 
and, if thus endangered, why does not the 
public take charge of the ships and avert this 
danger? No, it would be to the interest of 
private owners to provide the best possible ac¬ 
commodations, and competition and rivalry 
would bring charges down to a reasonable price ; 
and even if all wharves at certain places were 
controlled by one man, he would be obliged 
from personal interest to make charges reason¬ 
able. The same is true with all things in the 
nature of business interchange, and of all be it 
said, almost in defiance of successful contradic¬ 
tion, that public maladministration costs the 
people more than the most avaricious and capri¬ 
cious private extortion. Wherever there is, in the 
nature of things, a chance to obtain reasonable 
compensation for any service, private enter¬ 
prise is prompted to perform that service. 
There are certain things incident to the affairs 
of a great congregation of people, such as a 


POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 


29 


large city is, the performance of which cannot 
obtain adequate compensation. For example, 
paupers cannot pay for their own burial. Un¬ 
less by systems of voluntary charity (which 
would more largely exist if public performance 
did not so largely exist) poor-houses were main¬ 
tained, these incapables would have to he per¬ 
mitted to die or he maintained by the public. 
Hence, to a certain extent, public performance 
would be necessary. But in any of these, 
where, in the nature of things, reasonable com¬ 
pensation can be given for reasonable service, 
private enterprise will seek the business. Of 
all charities, public or private, it can be safely 
said, that the fewer there are the better, be¬ 
cause gratuitous support stimulates indolence 
and unfrugality, and invites, if it does not 
create, idleness and inalingery. 

It is difficult in this, as in many other things 
in human operations, to steer clear of Seylla 
without being wrecked on Charybdis. It is 
not correct, however, to state that all public 
duties are wholly supported by the owners of 
property. 

Substantially, all taxes follow the subject that 
is taxed, and eventually are paid by the con¬ 
sumer. If fixed property alone is taxed (as 
it alone should he), then only residential taxa- 


80 


POLITICS FOIL PRUDENT PEOPLE. 


tion is in the nature of consumption. Taxes 
on stores, depots, warehouses, railway tracks, 
bridges, etc., etc., are added on to the price of 
wares or transportation, and are paid by the 
consumer. When fixed property is taxed two 
per cent, by reason of the necessity of securing 
wealth with which to maintain the many things 
that the public now maintains, rents are higher 
than they would be (demand being the same) 
if taxation were only one per cent by reason of 
less public service, hence the renter pays for 
this service, not the property-owner, save what 
he pays on his private residence. Very re¬ 
motely this also might be shifted elsewhere, but 
not appreciably. It follows then that in the 
main renters pay for public service. They pay 
in the main for streets, police, firemen, parks, 
schools, and the like. If these public functions 
and many other things were not kept up by 
the extra price that landlords charge to ten¬ 
ants, then, other things equal, the tenants 
would pay less rent and would have more 
wealth (at least this much more) with which to 
supply themselves with these conveniences and 
comforts through various private sources. It 
is not true, therefore, that the supply of these 
things by the public is a gain to the people at 
large, because the people pay for them in in- 


POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 31 

creased rents to the owners of property. At 
present the masses no doubt prefer to pay for 
them in this way ; but they pay more than 
they would pay for similar private service. 

Ah ! will say the co-operator, hut if rents 
were lower, wages would be lower. Then it 
might be well to double rents and thus double 
wages. If wages are controlled by rents they 
should go up as rents advance. 

If men’s characters and aspirations are such 
as to cause them to desire a high standard of 
living, they will strive so to increase the pro¬ 
ductiveness of their labor as to secure wages 
that will supply those desires. They cannot 
get wages above the productiveness of their 
labor very long. For a time some laborer may 
get more than he is worth, that is, get compen¬ 
sation beyond his productiveness, but it will 
not last long nor be very general. Men get 
about what they are worth in the long run. 

But, say the co-operators, most of them have 
to “ wait too long ” before they are properly 
paid. They can cease “ to wait ” at all if they 
think they are not properly paid. No, nothing 
is gained by shifting duties on to the public in 
order that taxes must be higher, in order that 
rents must be higher, in order that wages (?) 
must be higher. 


82 


POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 


If this be so, then, to have all duties per¬ 
formed gratis by the public, so that the taxes 
would be double or quadruple what they have 
ever been, wages would be inconceivably high— 
high enough to satisfy the most fastidious of 
those who believe that wages are regulated by 
taxation. If neither of these propositions is true, 
then, if few duties are performed by the public, 
other things equal, taxes will, as we have said, 
be less, rents will be less, and wages will yet be 
regulated by ultimate productivity, as alone they 
can be ultimately regulated. 

The matter of wages, though so much dis¬ 
cussed and apparently so vital, is not a subject 
for regulation in any other way. 

Facility being the same, wages cannot be 
paid beyond their own productiveness very 
long. Facility may—in fact does—add much 
or little to productiveness, as the case may be; 
but after the maintenance, interest, and wear on 
the machine is deducted, then what the man has 
produced will in the end be his wage. If more, 
something has been got from nothing, which 
cannot be done at all, and something cannot be 
got “ for ” nothing very long. Public serv¬ 
ice must tend towards the minimum as fast as 
is practicable, or the best results will not be 
achieved. How soon it may be practicable to 


POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 


33 


properly confine this service is, of course, a 
question, but the sooner the better, for loss is 
certain, first, in the labor of collecting taxes 
and disbursing them, and secondly, in the less 
efficient service that is rendered, and in the 
prevention of specialization, from which all ex¬ 
cellence or most excellence comes. As hu¬ 
manity advances, that is, as individuals become 
possessed of a wider range of consciousness and 
a greater ability to reason, they begin, to a 
greater extent than before, to think on lines of 
comparison. They see that there are vast dif¬ 
ferences in the position, estate, and comfort in 
which men live. They see some may dwell in 
marble halls, with vassals and serfs by their 
sides ; they see that these may luxuriate in 
splendor and that others must exist like dogs, 
and are obliged to suffer the “ cheerless chiding 
of the winter’s wind.” 

These fortunate people, they reason, are 
simply men like themselves; they are hone 
of the same hone and flesh of the same flesh; 
all, they think, have the same ability to enjoy 
pleasure and the same disinclination to endure 
pain. Why is it that few have all that is good, 
all that is desirable, and all that tends to make 
life worth living, and that the many suffer the 
pangs of destitution and the horrors of want? 

3 


34 


POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 


Centuries ago, when the masses were less 
capable of comparative thought, if they 
reasoned at all about these things, they con¬ 
cluded that the kins: and his court were 
divinely appointed beings, and that the noble¬ 
men and the lords were almost equally blessed, 
and that there could be no mitigation of their 
miseries, no betterment of their state. In fact, 
they were void of aspiration, of effort, of am¬ 
bition. Gradually, however, a few began to 
consider, why is this so? In that state the 
masses now find themselves. They have 
evolved up to the state of inquiring why is 
this so, but not to the state of explaining why 
it is so. The only explanation now open to 
their comprehension is that it is so because 
the favored classes make or cause it to be so. 
Being unable to alter the situation, some 
become restive and rebellious, and others 
docile and submissive. Poverty, after being 
long endured, to some becomes, as it were, 
second nature. As the poet said regarding 
vice, it may also be said as to poverty, 
that it “is a monster of such hideous mien, 
that to be hated needs but to be seen ; but seen 
too oft, familiar with her face, we first endure, 
then pity, then embrace.” But for this recon¬ 
ciliation or, as it were, submission upon the 


POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 


35 


part of a vast majority to what appears to 
he inevitable and unavoidable, there would 
be greater tendencies towards revolution than 
there are, and greater police and military pro¬ 
tection would be required. When the condi- 
ditions become very much exasperated and 
strained, we now see incipient evidences of 
riot and tendencies toward bloodshed; and 
these may grow greater and more frequent 
and violent. We hear at times loud and 
ominous mutterings, the suppressed rum¬ 
blings of a trembling volcano, which may 
one day belch forth lurid flame and bathe the 
land and boil the sea in “ steep-down gulfs of 
liquid fire.’ , We want bread, or we want 
work ; our bodies are becoming emaciated and 
our children are starving; others will say we 
want “ justice, not charity.’’ This form of the 
demand implies a belief that justice is not 
being administered, and that the well-to-do 
people are the cause thereof. Just here is the 
error. The masses who reason better than they 
once did do not yet reason well enough, or the 
belief would not be entertained. 

“ Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie, which 
we ascribe to heaven. The fated sky gives 
us free scope; only doth backward pull our 
slow designs when we ourselves are dull.” 


86 


POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 


But, says the objector, we have not free 
scope. It is useless to say that 30,000 men 
could own half the wealth of America, a few 
hundred thousand the remaining half, and the 
millions own nothing, by any injustice that 
these few alone could inflict. Either this con¬ 
dition is the result of all—not part—of the 
multitudinous, aye, infinite causes that produce 
effects, or it is not. To say that it is not is to 
admit at once that effects are uncaused. 

We must then admit that it is the effect of 
the resultant of all causes. Now, the people 
as a whole are the medium through which 
or whom these causes act. Either this is so or 
it is not so. If so, then to change the effect 
we must either change the cause or change the 
medium through which it acts. To change 
the cause is to change nature in the absolute ; 
this cannot be done. 

To change the medium is to change the 
people. This cannot he done by changing the 
rich only, but by changing all , which can only 
be accomplished by time and evolution. 


POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 


37 


CHAPTER II. 

Competition or co-operation in society necessary ; which is 
preferable ?—Compromise between them not advisable 
—Production depends on energy—Greater production 
under competition than co-operation—No unnecessary 
energy expended under competition—Co-operation not 
to be mistaken for specialization. 

In the beginning- “ God created the heavens 
and the earth/’ or at a certain period, by the 
integration of matter and dissipation of motion, 
planetary systems and central suns evolved, 
or what we see all around us otherwise came 
to be what it is or appears to be. One or the 
other of these postulates is correct beyond all 
doubt. u God created man out of the dust of 
the earth,” or man evolved from lower forms, or 
man otherwise came to be what he is or ap¬ 
pears to be. One of these postulates is also 
correct beyond all doubt. Men’s societies 
were supernaturally caused to be what they 
are or appear to be, or they were evolved, or 
they were otherwise caused. 

We propose to deal with men’s societies, 
that is, with their associations, their govern- 


POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 


ments—be they created, evolved, or otherwise 
caused to exist. There has perhaps never been 
a time when alterations and changes were not 
sought as a result of discontent. 

Society must exist on an absolutely com¬ 
petitive basis, or on an absolutely co-operative 
basis, or on a basis intermediary between these 
two. By the absolutely competitive basis we 
mean that system under which the inexorable 
law of the survival of the fittest is permitted to 
work out its course. By the absolutely co-op¬ 
erative basis we mean substantially that each 
shall contribute to a general fund to an extent 
equal to his ability, and that each shall draw 
from said fund to an extent equal to his needs. 
By a basis intermediary between these two we 
mean a system partly competitive and partly 
co-operative. 

Associations of individuals into political or¬ 
ganizations that espouse in the abstract some 
phase of the above proportions are numerous. 
All must, however, be comprehended within 
these limitations. 

Since the partly competitive and partly co¬ 
operative systems cannot be positively defined, 
we will at first consider the absolutely compet¬ 
itive against the absolutely co-operative system. 

If either of these two systems is best, then 


POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 


39 


there is no need for the consideration of the 
other. If competition fundamentally is best, 
then, given time, all the multitudinous phases 
and processes of society can be arranged on 
that basis; and the same is true as to co¬ 
operation. Sentiency or consciousness is with 
the individual, not with the society. 

No two brains contain precisely the same 
percentages of elementary substances ; no two 
are of precisely the same size, shape, or weight; 
no two contain precisely the same amount of 
gray relatively to white matter; and no two con¬ 
tain precisely the same tortuosity of cerebral 
convolutions. No two act precisely in the 
same way, hence no two produce precisely the 
same thoughts, wishes, aspirations, or desires ; 
nor can any two find absolute contentment 
under the same set of circumstances or condi¬ 
tions. It follows from this that each individ¬ 
ual, to be absolutely contented, should be able 
to cause conditions to be exactly suited to him¬ 
self, or conversely. If conditions are exactly 
suited to himself and if he is unlike all others, 
then his conditions are unsuited to all the rest; 
and hence conditions that represent the con¬ 
sensus of all the rest, differing as they must 
from each individual’s preference, cannot be 
absolutely suited to any individual. There is 


40 


POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 


one chance to infinity that the consensus might 
conform to the wishes of one individual. 
If individual desires are to conform to the con¬ 
sensus, then individual contentment is to that 
extent curbed, and it could not continue to so 
conform unless a static and not a dynamic 
state of brain matter is assumed. It must be 
admitted that the more conditions differ from 
what an indivdual would have them, the 
more is that individual discontented. It 
follows, then, that any difference implies some 
discontent. Now, whether this discontent is suf¬ 
ficiently objectionable or oppressive to cause 
complaint, matters not for the principle involved 
in the proposition. If the individual is willing 
to yield to the community his said discontent, 
considering that he is in some other manner 
adequately recompensed, this might be well; 
but it is clear that if the community sought to 
propitiate all it must again offend some, hence 
absolute individual contentment is not possible 
under a co-operative system. 

In order that certain forms on the earth may 
assume and continue in the state called life , 
certain energy must be expended. 

By the aid of the sun’s heat, the leaves of 
plants are rendered capable of dissociating the 
carbon from the oxygen in the atmosphere. 


POLITICS TOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 


41 


Certain conditions enable some plants to do 
this to a greater degree in a given time than 

O O o 

other plants, hence some do that which we call 
“ grow ” more rapidly than others. 

In the steam-engine and in the man, the 
horse, or any other animal, the process is re¬ 
versed, and the aforesaid sun-energy is util¬ 
ized. Molecular motion into molar motion, or 
energy of position into energy of action, is the 
general process. 

Now, some men exert more energy than 
others; some construct machines to utilize 
other forms of energy to a greater extent than 
other men. 

Whatever is produced, or rather whatever 
crude material is changed into utilizable forms, 
represents so much energy. Both the material 
and the energy previously existed, but the former 
has simply been “ moved ” by the latter, so that 
certain molecules or small masses occupy a 
different place relatively to other molecules and 
masses than before. As we have found that 
absolute individual contentment is not possi¬ 
ble under co-operation, so will it be found that 
the best exertion, which tends to bring to the 
individual the means of contentment, is not pos¬ 
sible, or at least only very remotely probable, 
under co-operation. The principal reason 


42 


POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 


for the non-exercise of best individual en¬ 
deavor under co-operation is the removal of the 
stimulus or incentive to endeavor, to wit, the 
acquisition and retention of superior posses¬ 
sion, or place, or Loth. If by any system the 
effort of the individual is curbed, the result of 
his exercise and energy is less, hence, since the 
body politic is but an aggregation of individ¬ 
uals, the result of the aggregated exercise of 
energy is less. 

This means that fewer crude forms are to 
be converted or moved into utilizable forms, 
from which it follows that what we call pro¬ 
duction will be less, and hence consumption must 
be less, or the society will lose its wealth till it 
eventually becomes bankrupt. If consumption 
is less, then the standard of living is lower, that 
is, our society has progressed less, become sta¬ 
tionary, or it has retrogressed. Since no ab¬ 
solutely stationary condition is conceivable in 
anything, and since to progress less is tanta¬ 
mount to actual loss, it follows that the society 
has receded toward primitive barbarism in¬ 
stead of 'proceeded towards higher civilization. 
Now, men will either produce more or less 
under a competitive system than under a co¬ 
operative system. This cannot be denied. 

Whichever system to the greatest extent re- 


POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 


43 


moves the incentive to individual endeavor, that 
is the system under which production will be 
less, other things being equal. Details are 
useless. Co-operation means either less or 
greater production than competition. Since 
the desire to excel is eliminated, it must mean 
less. If* production is less, the standard of 
living must be lower, that is to say, the prince 
will live less like a prince, and the proletariat 
more like a beggar. 

Does the competitive system require that en¬ 
ergy must be uselessly expended to a greater 
degree than a co-operative system ? We will 
take for example the necessity of tradesmen ad¬ 
vertising their wares. Were it not for the cost 
of say ten per cent for advertising, clothes 
could be sold for ten per cent less. But how 
about the newspaper? We now get a good 
newspaper for a very low price, because much 
revenue is obtained by the publisher from 
the advertiser. If half of the revenue of 
the publisher is thus obtained, then, were this 
source of gain cut off, obviously we should not 
get as good a paper for as low a price as we 
now do. If, by reason of receiving one thou¬ 
sand dollars from advertising and one thousand 
dollars from circulation in one day, the pub¬ 
lisher is able to give us the news of the world, 


44 


POLITICS FOP PRUDENT PEOPLE. 


covering fifty or one hundred columns, certain 
it appears that this service would have to be 
scaled down if the one thousand dollars from 
advertising, which is almost all clear gain, were 
cut off from the revenue of the publishers. 
This principle and policy will hold throughout 
everything. The newspaper is what it is to-day 
because it has become adapted to the wants of 
to-day in its locality; and so with all industrial 
pursuits. Cut off any one of the conditions or 
practices of commercial interchange, which is 
what it is by reason of the same adaptation, and 
an answerable result will appear elsewhere if 
sought out to the ultimate. Do the many small 
stores and shops that exist under the competi¬ 
tive system, and which would be aggregated 
into a few large emporiums under co-operation, 
cause a loss to the former ? The small shops 
exist because they fit the conditions for distri¬ 
bution better than large emporiums, else the 
large emporiums would now supersede the 
small shops. If under co-operation large em¬ 
poriums were enforced, complaint would arise 
consequent upon loss of time and lack of con¬ 
venience for distribution and on account of 
the cost of transportation over greater dis¬ 
tances of travel. In the long run there can be 
no superfluous facility for production or dis- 


POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 


45 


tribution, for if superfluous it would die out 
—i. e. it would not be maintained. 

Then, if by reason of stimulation to individ¬ 
ual endeavor, production under competition is 
greater, and if no superfluous energy is ex¬ 
pended, which could not without retroactive 
loss be saved under co-operation, it is true that 
the result under competition is greater than it 
would be under co-operation. 

Let not enthusiasm or bias for or against 
either affect personal judgment. It is true 
that one or the other system will result in the 
greater production. The results of each can¬ 
not be equal. For the above reasons it appears 
almost certain that competition produces 
greater results; and from experimentation, such 
as has been partially indulged in, the like re¬ 
sult is indicated. Neither has been absolutely 
proven, but if 3 : G : : 6 : 12, it may be safely 
inferred that 6 : 12 :: 12 : 24. If complete 
co-operation results in less product than com¬ 
petition, then partial co-operation must also 
result in less, but not as much less as complete 
co-operation. To the extent that production 
is less, be the cause attributable to anything 
whatsoever, consumption must be less, that is, 
the standard of living must be lower, or ac¬ 
cumulation will be less. To the extent that 


46 POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 

accumulation is lessened, the price for the use 
of wealth will be higher. If accumulation is 
stopped, retrogression will begin, that is, instead 
of becoming daily richer we shall become daily 
poorer, till barbarism will ultimately result. 
Co-operation must not be mistaken for special¬ 
ization. Specialization is not only compati¬ 
ble with competition, but is almost the direct 
result of it. Those who favor co-operation 
argue that, if one hundred men hitherto made 
all the parts of one hundred pairs of shoes in 
two days, and that subsequently, if by special¬ 
izing their work so that ten sets of men could 
work at ten different essential parts of each 
shoe, they could make one hundred pairs in one 
day, then this result is to be attributed to co¬ 
operation. 

This appears to be erroneous. Each man 
who now makes one part is just as much the 
competitor of each other man who makes one 
part as each man who previously made a whole 
shoe was the competitor of each other man who 
made a whole shoe. 

All have gained by specialization, hence the 
tendency of the product is to be cheapened. 

Aside from specialization there was no other 
way to cause things to tend towards cheapness 
except by increased facility, that is, by utiliza- 


POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 


47 


tion of cheaper forms of energy than that 
energy which is eliminated by the oxidation of 
carboniferous food products in the body of a 
man. Cheaper forms of energy may be ob¬ 
tained by the use of horse or other animal 
power, by natural forces, such as water, wind, 
or by the oxidation of coal. These are the 
principal sources of energy that may be and 
usually are cheaper than man energy. The 
factory system is the result of a tendency 
towards specialization, and facility and the ten¬ 
dency of factories to form trusts and combina¬ 
tions is hut an enlargement of the same. In¬ 
dividuals who labor in factories are not the 
less competitors than before, hence this tendency 
cannot he deemed a step toward co-operation, 
as friends of that system argue. 

Individuals in factories who do not produce as 
much as, or, if as much, of a poorer quality than, 
other individuals, are, in the long run, less well 
paid, as, of course, they should be. 

Now, since by the aggregation of individuals 
into shops, and since by the aggregation of 
shops into trusts, greater specialization and 
facility have been vouchsafed, it by no means 
follows that, by the aggregation of all shops 
into a great industrial nation, still better results 
will ensue. 


48 


POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 


If, in the shop of a great industrial nation, 
each worker were compensated to the extent 
of his excellence, as is ultimately forced by 
competition, then competition would exist in the 
government’s shop just as it now exists in the 
employer’s shop, leaving poor producers rela¬ 
tively where they now stand. If they would 
be thus relatively where they now are, their 
status could not he made better except by some 
gratuity from the others. This would not be 
practicable under such a system without caus¬ 
ing discontent any more than contributions 
from the strong in aid of the weak can now he 
forced without discontent, and if forced the 
stimulus to effort would he lost and production 
would be reduced, and, as before stated, a lower 
standard of living would he enforced. 

The details of this process are always con¬ 
fusing and should he avoided. It is true that 
if the whole is moved, all parts are moved; 
hence, if under competition the aggregate re¬ 
sult in units of production is greater, then by 
either complete or partial co-operation it must 
be less. 

The motive that prompts combination among 
the few individuals and the specialization and 
facility that it renders possible would not exist 
as applied to the mass, hence it is not true that 


POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 


49 


trusts in industries indicate the success of co¬ 
operation if applied to society at large. The 
word “ co-operation ” is used to cover all 
phases of that school of thought represented 
by socialism, communism, and the like. All 
these are kindred in kind, differing perhaps in 
degree. The abstract question is, competition 
against co-operation —which is better for 
mankind ? By being better, what do we 
mean ? 

We mean that which will enable a day’s 
labor to get the greatest contentment. If the 
possession of useful things, by which life is 
made more comfortable, tends towards content¬ 
ment, then we want that system which makes 
these things most accessible to a day’s labor, 
or its equivalent. 

Useful things, from houses to hoe-handles, 
constitute wealth. These things are simply 
matter altered by energy from its crude state 
into a less crude state. Now, the greater the 
amount of wealth that exists per capita the 
cheaper it is, that is to say, a given amount of 
wealth or the use of it can then be had for 
less labor. The more houses per capita the 
cheaper their purchase or rental price. 

The greater the wealth the less the interest, 
that is, the less the cost for the use of wealth. 

4 


50 


POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 


Now, that system which causes the greatest 
production and conservation is the system that 
brings the cheapest wealth, because it brings 
the most wealth. 

If the invested wealth per capita in America 
to-day were five times as great as it is, even if 
owned as it now is, the condition of society 
would be five times as good, i. e., the average 
standard of living would be five times as high, 
for this would mean, if not five times as many 
houses and other forms of wealth, then five 
times as good houses for the same interest 
charge. Whenever the demand for quantity 
ceases, the demand for betterment or quality 
sets in. Instead of building more houses, poor 
houses are torn down and better houses erected 
in their stead; and so with everything. As 
wealth accumulates, these better things are 
offered for use at the same or lower rates than 
the poor things they supplanted. 

It follows, then, that the accumulation of 
wealth is a very great boon to the human race. 
Let us see if it is not the only boon, or rather, 
let us see if, by increased accumulation of 
wealth alone, conditions can be made better. 

That is the question. If affirmatively 
settled then, if competition produces more than 
co-operation, the latter must vanish. As long 


POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 51 

as men have desires, so long will they seek to 
gratify those desires, and any system that de¬ 
stroys or weakens the incentive to such gratifi¬ 
cation, curtails effort and diminishes produc¬ 
tion. If more is produced when men work to 
the extent of 100 units of energy than when 
they work to the extent of 90 units, then, 
unless it is wasted or consumed, more will he 
accumulated. The likelihood of waste is 
greater where reward does not directly follow 
effort than where it does directly follow it. 

It follows, then, that accumulation will be 
greater, and, if greater, humanity is benefited 
more than by a system under which accumu¬ 
lation is not so great, for the reasons above set 
forth, viz.: less interest and easy accessibility 
to wealth; that is the desideratum. Does 
reward follow effort under co-operation as 
directly as under competition ? This is not an 
idle question and must be answered affirmatively 
or negatively. We answer it negatively. Is 
reward an incentive to exertion ? We answer 
that affirmatively. Does exertion tend to 
greater production than idleness or non-exer¬ 
tion ? We answer that affirmatively. Reduc¬ 
ing these interrogatories to their simplest form, 
we find that reward is an incentive to effort, 
and that effort is greater where reward is 


52 


POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 


direct than where it is indirect or remote. 
Competition insures direct reward, while co¬ 
operation insures indirect reward, hence effort 
is greater under competition than under co¬ 
operation, hence production is greater, hence 
wealth is greater, hence interest is lower, hence 
the standard of living is higher. 


POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 


58 


CHAPTER III. 


Individual rights—All things and processes natural—What 
are natural media?—Development of life—The rights of 
living things—Labor necessary to possess all media— 
Unearned increment applies to wealth as to crude media 
—Better that all media be owned—All rights relative, 
none absolute—Adaptation necessary to all changes— 
The poor not oppressed by the ricli—Utilization of 
other forms of energy required—Consumption and 
waste cause poverty—Over-production in quantity tends 
toward betterment of quality. 

When matter in certain aggregations of its 
molecules or atoms has become vitally excited 
we say it lives—there is a living thing. 

Very well. When parts of that certain ag¬ 
gregation of molecules or atoms so combine as 
to be able to assume a certain state of motion, 
we call that state consciousness. We then 
recognize that we are individuals. How this 
recognition is accomplished is beyond the com¬ 
prehension of most individuals, if not all, hence 
we will not dwell on it. 

We then begin to consider questions of in¬ 
dividual rights. What constitutes rights ? It 
of course implies action. What actions are 


54 


POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 


right, i. e., what actions can we perform? Can 
we do anything? No, many things are impos¬ 
sible for want of sufficient force. Can we do 
anything that we have the force to do ? If 
one man were the only conscious individual in 
the universe or on the earth, yes. 

If there be one other conscious or equally 
conditioned individual on the earth, then the 
rights of the first have to do with the rights of 
the other if they are conscious of each other’s 
existence. If each does whatever he pleases, 
then they may clash, and he who is the mightier 
only can do as he pleases; the other must suc¬ 
cumb. If when there was but one he could do 
whatever he had the power to do, then when 
there are two they may do whatever each has 
power and desires to do, provided he thwart not 
the equal right of the other. If this is true of 
two men it is true of two hundred billion or 
any number. Then “ each man has the right 
to do whatsoever he will provided he does not 
thwart the equal right of another man.” Has 
man a right to live? that is, since certain mat¬ 
ter has become vitally excited, has it a right to 
continue said excitation ? Yes, just as long as 
it can and no longer. Man has a right to live 
as long as he can live ; that is, he has a right to 
exert his best efforts to continue the process 


POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 


55 


of life, which means to use his best efforts to 
procure the means whereby that process may 
he continued. If his right extends beyond 
this then it trespasses upon the right of another, 
for, obviously, if a man cannot get for himself 
the necessary means of life, then, to live, he 
must have these means provided by some other 
man or men and given over to him for his sus¬ 
tenance. If he has a right to demand suste¬ 
nance of another, then that other has a right 
to demand sustenance of him. But one can 
supply, and the other cannot. Then the one 
who can supply has not the right to live if he 
can, but only the right to live subject to a 
donation to the other man who otherwise 
would die. If the weak man has the right to 
live other than by his own power, then the 
strong must supply the lacking power, which 
places the weak in a position of supremacy as 
regards the strong. This principle carried out, 
and all ere long would be equally weak, all 
would degenerate, and consequently all would 
die sooner than if the strong had equal rights 
with the weak, which of course he must have. 
Then each, as far as rights are concerned, has 
a right to live as long as he can, and no other 
right. What the strong may voluntarily do 
for the weak is quite another matter from what 


56 


POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 


the weak have a right to demand of the strong. 
If man has only the right to use his best efforts 
to live, then he has only a right to use his best 
efforts for the means necessary to life. Man is 
a part of nature. Man and monad are simply 
threads of the same fabric woven in the roaring 
loom of time. 

Being a part of nature his relation to nature 
is universal, that is, he is related to all nature, 
and in one and the same way. What, then, 
does nature, to which he is thus universally re¬ 
lated, comprise ? Everything in the universe 
and every process in the universe. 

The process that produced the poem “ Win¬ 
ter’s Tale,” in which it is written, 

“ Nature is made better by no mean, 

But nature makes that mean. So, 

O’er that art which you say adds to nature 
Is an art which nature makes,” 


is just as much a natural process as the man 
who wrote it was a natural man, or as the growth 
of a flower or the evolution of a solar system. 
Then if man is in principle related in the same 
way to everything in the universe, his relation 
to crude forms can differ only in propinquity 
or degree, from his relation to forms that are 
not so crude. Then man’s right of access 


POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 57 

to crude natural media differs not in prin¬ 
ciple from his right of access to any form 
into which such natural media are moved or 
altered. What are natural media ? When the 
planet Earth started on its independent course 
as such it was, perhaps, a gaseous mass, finally 
integrating into liquidity, viscidity, and solid¬ 
ity. Its temperature at the start is estimated 
to have been 3,000,000 Fah. of heat. Later, 
oxidation, erosion, and other processes through¬ 
out endless time caused this mass of natural 
media to be as it now is. When certain matter 
began to take on that excitation called life, 
natural media consisted in part of an oxide of hy¬ 
drogen, which at the living temperature is fused, 
and which many people call water. They consist¬ 
ed also of air heavily charged with carbon dioxide, 
of many other oxides and other chemical com¬ 
pounds, which many people call land or earth. 
The waters developed low forms of life, which 
became higher forms by survival and adapta¬ 
tion. Of course each form had its own right 
to live if it could. 

To say that it had an unconditional right 
to live, regardless of whether or not its own 
powers enabled it to do so, is to say that it had 
a right to force others to make good its defici¬ 
encies, which would of course impair the right 


58 POLITICS FOE PRUDENT PEOPLE. 

of the other to use its power for its own pro¬ 
gress. 

Later, land forms of life appeared, but the 
right only to live if each form could live was 
not altered simply because life appeared on land 
as well as in water. Now, if the first forms of 
land life, as all forms of water life, both past 
and present, have no right to force other forms 
than themselves to provide them with the 
means wherewithal to live, then the secondary 
or tertiary forms of land life had no such right; 
and hence the last or highest form, man, has 
no such right, nor has any intermediate form 
of life any such right. 

Man therefore only has a right to live if he 
can, hence he only has a right to possess 
natural media, which are necessary to life, if he 
can. 

Private ownership, therefore, in natural 
media is as natural and as just as the gravi¬ 
tating influence of the celestial orbs on each 
other. There are no unnatural media. No 
man ever made a house; he only “ moved ” 
certain previously existing things into a shape 
or form called a house. When he does this he 
does nothing more in principle than when he 
does any other kind of labor, but simply does 
more or less in quantity, as the case may be. 


POLITICS FOE,. PRUDENT PEOPLE. 


59 


When a man goes out and looks at and walks 
over or around a piece of land, provided no other 
man has done the same before, he has done 
more to entitle him to own that land than any 
other man has done; hence, as far as the 
claims of men are concerned, he has “ labored ” 
for it more than any other man. It is argued 
that, since the fish has access to the water and 
the bird to the air, each of which is necessary 
to the life of these beings, man—a land 
animal—should have access to land, which is 
necessary to the life of man. This pleases the 
ear of the masses and sounds well to every¬ 
body. 

Has man, they say, a right to live ? If so, 
they continue, he has a right to land, without 
which he cannot live. All natural media that 
are related to man as the waters are to the 
fish , or as the air is to the birds, or as the icater, 
air, or sunshine is to man, are now accessible 
to man just as the waters are to the fish or the 
air is to the bird. But some natural media are 
not thus related to man, nor man to them. 

What constitutes this difference in relation¬ 
ship ? The expenditure of individual energy 
or labor for certain individual parcels or tracts 
of certain crude, natural media. 

Aside from differences in temperature, that 


60 


POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 


is, aside from different degrees of heat, all 
water and all air and all sunshine is practically 
the same. Neither is deteriorated appreciably 
by occupancy nor improved by care as are all 
crude media, other than air, water, and sunshine, 
to which man must have access; neither is 
labored for by particular individuals as access 
to that crude medium called land is labored for 
by man. Differences in temperature, save as 
influenced by the surrounding air, are not ap¬ 
plicable to land. Without the air all land would 
be cold and barren, or subjected to insuffer¬ 
able glare. Whilst to these other forms of 
media labor has no appreciable bearing on 
accessibility, excellence, or inferiority, to land, 
in a greater or less degree, labor is absolutely 
indispensable in determining these qualities. 
Even access to any certain piece of land re¬ 
quires labor. Whilst all other crude media are 
substantially homogeneous, land is as diverse in 
character and quality as are the mountains and 
valleys in size and proportion. It varies 
almost as much in quality and location as do 
the planets in their motions and distances from 
the sun. After labor has been expended for 
access, even then more labor has to be ex¬ 
pended in making it useful to man. If man is 
entitled to the fruit of his labor, when has he 


POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 


61 


labored sufficiently to entitle him to said fruit ? 
Is it when he pre-empts a certain piece of land 
that no other man has labored for even to this 
extent, or when he has grubbed it, or cleared 
it or moved stones off of it, or drained water 
off or on to it, or when he has moved the 
soil in the labor of plowing it, or when he has 
taken a part of the soil and shaped it into 
bricks and piled these bricks into a shape called 
a house, or at what period does he begin to 
be entitled to the fruit of his labor ? Obvious¬ 
ly he can have the fruit of said labor only by 
possessing access to or owning said land to an 
extent that some other man does not equally 
enjoy. 

As to his claims as against a herd of rumi¬ 
nating beasts or other forms of life, that is de¬ 
termined as the claim of the beasts was as 
regards forms of life below them. Superior 
energy in some form takes possession, but it is 
an exercise of energy. The energy, therefore, 
that a man exerts when he pre-empts a piece of 
land is exactly the same in kind as that exerted 
in moving matter into the shape of a house or 
any other shape, and each is worth exactly the 
amount of labor thus expended, voiding other 
influences which may bear on each the same or 
differently. He has a right then to both, if he 


62 


POLITICS FOP PRUDENT PEOPLE. 


has a right to the usufruct of his own labor; 
and if he has not the right to the usufruct of 
his labor, then who, with greater justice, has 
such right ? 

If he has the right to both the land and 
house, then he has the right to the increase or 
decrease in value that may subsequently result 
from social causes and operations. If society 
shall claim the right to any gain that the pres¬ 
ence of people may have contributed, then it 
should rightfully make good any loss that the 
absence of people may cause. If a man ex¬ 
pended ten days’ labor in pre-empting a farm, 
if subsequently the people should all leave the 
country, they should compensate him for his 
loss if, per contra , they would have absorbed 
his gain. This influence is called unearned 
increment. This gain, the world over, will not 
equal compound interest and taxes. To express 
the reverse influence we may use the words 
unavoidable decrement . The owner must, in 
equity and in accord with the life process, be 
subjected to both. Society cannot step in as to 
either without causing reactionary injustice and 
inevitable loss. Does unearned increment and 
unavoidable decrement affect the house as well 
as the land ? We will assume that in a certain 
village there exist one hundred houses, all com- 


POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 

fortably filled, and ten thousand acres of land 
within its limits. Suddenly there is a discovery 
of gold that causes a great and rapid influx of 
people. The houses will certainly receive the 
first gain from the unearned increment, and if 
the auriferous deposit is thought to be uncer¬ 
tain or not extensive, the acre land will re¬ 
ceive practically no increment, though for quite 
a while both the price and the rent of the houses 
may be quadrupled or more. 

On the other hand, certain eligible sites 
of land near harbors 'or other places where 
people congregate, gain more than houses; but 
usually houses gain first because they are more 
directly and approximately useful when people 
are present; and, contrariwise, they usually lose 
first when population is absent, for the land may 
have other uses than for building sites, while 
the houses could be used only as houses. 
Both the land and the house, therefore, are 
affected by unearned increment and the reverse, 
both depending only on conditions . 

The capitol building at Washington or a 
house on Fifth Avenue in New York, or on 
Regent Street in London, might cost more if 
built in the desert of Sahara than where they 
are built, because of the extra labor of trans¬ 
porting the means and men with which to effect 


64 


POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 


such construction : hut either would be worth 
very much less than they are worth where they 
are. What a thing cost does not determine its 
value; but its value is equal to the quantity 
of labor that would he voluntarily exchanged 
for it. A flying machine that won’t fly is not 
worth 10,000 days’ labor because it has cost 
10,000 days’ labor. Then, if the aforesaid 
houses are worth less in Sahara than where 
they are, they are worth more where they are 
than in Sahara—why ? Because of the 
presence of people. If, therefore, those nat¬ 
ural forms which some people choose to call 
wealth, as contradistinguished from land or 
natural media, but toward which man naturally 
is in no sense differently related, are subjects of 
gain or loss by the presence or absence of people 
(to deny which seems unreasonable—aye more), 
then any system which seeks to deprive man 
of said gain as to the so-called land (or natural 
media) must be extended to all other wealth 
that has been similarly affected, which means, 
when traced out, practically all wealth. When 
people congregate around fixed wealth it ad¬ 
vances, and when movable wealth is congre¬ 
gated around the people, i. e., taken where 
people who desire it are, it increases in value. 
Some natural media are owned because it is 


POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 


65 


practicable to own them. Air, sunshine, and 
mid-ocean water are not owned because it is not 
as yet practicable for them to be owned. People 
would be no worse but perhaps better off if 
they could be owned—why? Because they 
would in all probability be made better or fit¬ 
ter for use than they are, and it may be better 
to pay interest for good air, water, and sun¬ 
shine than to get bad for nothing, just as it is 
better to pay interest for a good house than to 
get a hole in the ground for nothing. Sup¬ 
pose all men had access to the sea-coast, as in 
the main they have, which would be better, to 
fish with a line in the open for nothing or to 
pay some other man interest on appliances 
such as boats and tackle in a place where he 
had corraled a vast supply of fish? 

That would depend on the conditions, but 
one can easily imagine the latter to be better; 
and in most cases he will prefer, and wisely so 
too, to take the latter for pay rather than the 
former for nothing. Similarly one can see how 
it might be wiser to pay for the sun’s heat cor¬ 
raled under a glass roof than to take the open 
for nothing and have three-fourths of his plants 
to die of biting frost. Some day the sun’s 
heat and the ocean’s wave may be corraled, and 
if so miasmatic swamps and frozen wastes will 
5 


66 


POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 


be made habitable and useful. It will be bet¬ 
ter to pay for greater quantities of heat and 
light that will make life luxuriant than to use 
for nothing the small quantities that now make 
it miserable, dwarfish, or impossible. If such 
ends are ever accomplished, the means and 
supply, like other things, must be owned under 
the same natural conditions. 

Man has a right to use his best efforts to 
breathe air. If his lungs won’t perform, no other 
man can breathe for him, so he dies. He would 
have no right to force another man to breathe 
for him even if such a performance were possi¬ 
ble. So with his right to sunshine and to all 
things; supply the right to use them if he can. 
It follows, therefore, that if a man cannot procure 
for himself the needs of life, which means also if 
he cannot procure access to air, water, land, etc., 
etc., as against a stronger man, he must die unless 
the stronger man assists him to live. This the 
strong man may elect to do, but the weak man 
has no right to force him to do, which, as be¬ 
fore said, would destroy the right of the strong 
man to use his efforts for himself just to that 
extent in which he used them for the weak 
man. If no support to the weak (meaning 
adults, of course) had ever been extended, sur¬ 
viving mankind would be better conditioned 


POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 


67 


to-day than they are. This aid should not be per¬ 
mitted to go beyond that voluntarily extended 
by individuals to individuals, and even this 
causes a loss. The status of a man in society 
is only conceivable, as all others are, as related 
to something else or to other men in society. 
Having no absolute conceptions we can have no 
absolute relations. This relation differs not 
in principle from the relation of one tree to 
other trees in the forest. Mankind having de¬ 
veloped higher faculties makes their functions 
more numerous, hence more complicated and 
difficult to trace out. But because of this in¬ 
creased complexity the rights of each to the 
other are not in principle or in fact altered. 

Men have no more rights relatively to their 
fellows than the heavenly bodies have to their 
fellows. As the earth by its force makes the 
moon move through more space than the moon 
makes the earth move through, so a strong man 
in the ultimate dominates the weak man. 

We see society as it is; why is it as it is ? 
Certainly because of some one or of the con¬ 
sensus of many causes. If this is not so, then 
what is so ? These many causes go clear back 
to where the human deponent saith not—to 
the ultimate! They have either proceeded 
from the ultimate by regular steps and in strict 


68 POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 

accordance with what we call law along lines of 
least resistance, or towards centers of greatest 
attraction, or they have not. If not, there is 
no science in anything ; if so, there is absolute 
science in everything. Then the science of 
sociology is as exact as that of astronomy or 
chemistry. We seek now to make society 
different from what it is. 

Why not try to make astronomy different 
from what it is ? Though it appears to us as 
if we can and do, yet really we do not alter 
society from the laws which underlie it any 
more than we alter astronomy or geology. 

By some highly-developed natural processes 
we do contrive to alter crude forms somewhat, 
and thereby make it possible for ourselves to 
live where, without such contrivances, we could 
not live; yet whenever we make a hill, we dig 
a hole or make some other hill smaller. So in 
society, whenever we effect even the small 
changes that we do effect, we do so according 
to natural law and by the impetus of natural 
energy, and create a minus for every plus. To 
make some men richer, wealth being the same, 
makes other men poorer. 

These changes which we desire to make in 
society are at bottom desires upon the part of 
the poorly conditioned to better their con- 


POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 69 

ditions, and most of them seek to do it at the 
cost of the better conditioned. 

This is a grave error, and aside from being 
unjust, cannot he accomplished without reac¬ 
tionary and damaging results. If there were 
no greater damage, the loss occasioned by the 
transfer would be very great. The thing to do 
is to better the condition of society at large by 
accumulating more wealth, not by taking exist¬ 
ing wealth from its present owners. 

Oppose or scolf at this as many will, yet it 
is the only plan that will accomplish better 
conditions for mankind. 

The question then arises, how can this be 
done? Are not people laboring as hard as they 
can labor, thus producing as much as they can 
produce and saving as much as they can save ? 
To which, be it answered : If this is absolutely 
true, their existing conditions must remain prac¬ 
tically as they are. Without increased accumu¬ 
lations of wealth, the poor can be bettered only 
at the expense of the rich. To the extent that 
the rich were reduced and the poor made re¬ 
cipients of said reductions, then, if the poor 
consumed this wealth, which they must do to get 
a better standard of living, which is the only end 
sought, wealth would be to that extent reduced, 
and access to what remained would be more 


70 POLITICS POP PRUDENT PEOPLE. 

costly, that is, interest would be higher. Con¬ 
tinue this process and soon there would be no 
rich people, and, the wealth having been con¬ 
sumed by said better standard of living, there 
would be no wealth at all. So at best, unless 
more wealth is produced and accumulated, there 
could only be a very brief betterment of the 
condition of the poor. 

All the wealth in the United States (using 
the word wealth to cover all things for which 
labor will exchange itself) in 1890 amounted 
to only about $1,000 per capita . The net gain 
for the previous ten years was only about 3 per 
cent per annum. This means, of course, that if 
all wealth were divided each inhabitant could 
receive an income of $30 per year, or less than 
ten cents per day, more than he now receives. 

Of course most of them would proceed to live 
up, that is, they would consume the principal, to 
wit, the $1,000, which would mean the annihila¬ 
tion of the present accumulation and consequent 
barbarism till wealth were again accumulated, 
which it would be by the “ fit,” but not by 
the “ unfit.” 

Scoff at this who may, but it would be 
wiser to disprove it, for if it is true, then no 
system of division can be countenaced, for, 
if total division means what is here stated, 


POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 


71 


then partial division means the same thing 
differing only in degree and time ; and all co¬ 
operative schemes are partial divisions, disguise 
them as we may. If divided to the extent of half 
the accumulated wealth, then the approach to 
barbarism would he twice as long; and so rela¬ 
tively with any other percentage of division. 
But, say many, when thus pressed, we do not 
wish to divide. Then what do you mean? If 
what you propose is not that at bottom, what is 
it ? Certain it is that if the poor are to he 
made better off other than by increased pro¬ 
duction and accumulation, it must come from 
somewhere ; and since the rich alone can be the 
“where,” it must come from the rich; and if 
from the rich, what is that process if not divis¬ 
ion either in whole or in part, as the case may 
be? But we do want to produce more, 
say the friends of all systems of co-opera¬ 
tion. Then why not do it ? is the answer. 
Things are “ over-produced ” now, says another. 
Then the country is too rich, and we must de¬ 
stroy some wealth to make it poorer, hence 
better, must be the reply to this objector. No, 
what we want is “ more equitable distribution,” 
says another. Then you want a division either 
of existing wealth or of that hereafter to exist 
—one or the other, or both. “ More equita- 


POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 


ble ” must mean “ more equal/’ for the words 
are derived from the same root. If not, then 
what does “ more equitable ” mean ? A more 
just division, is the reply. What does more 
just, or “juster,” mean? It means that the 
poor should get either less or more of what is 
oris to be, does it not? Yes, get more, of 
course. Then unless more is produced the rich 
must get less, must they not ? And here is your 
division. Well, how much more shall the 
poor get, and how much less must the rich get ? 
No, we do not want a division, we want simply 
justice. Then what is justice? 

In other words, please define your wants 
more specifically. Justice means that every 
man, woman, and child should have enough to 
eat, drink, and wear, and good shelter and abil¬ 
ity to go when and where they desire. Very 
well, that is every man’s benediction for the 
human race. But why do they not have it? 
Because they cannot. Why can they not? 
Because of the oppression of our present social 
system. What oppression ? That of a few own¬ 
ing everything, and the many owning nothing. 

Then you would have the rich divide up with 
the poor so as to relieve the oppression, other¬ 
wise how can it be relieved ? a No, we do not 
want a division ; we want the masses who toil 


POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 


73 


to get the benefit of their labor.” Do you 
wish this to apply only to the future ? No, to 
all times. Then, by inference at least, you say 
that the rich have now got the benefit of the 
past labor of those who toil ? “ They have,” 

is usually the reply. Would you have them 
yield it up ? I’d force them to do so, say the most 
enthusiastic co-operative advocates. Then you 
do want a division ? Well, if it has to be so, to in¬ 
sure j ustice, yes. What would you suggest as an 
equitable division, one, ten, or one hundred per 
cent? All the rich have stolen from the poor. 
How much is that, all or half or only one per 
cent of what they own? About all they own 
has been forced from the earnings of the poor. 
Then all must be yielded up, and if so, to whom? 
To society, of course, for all have an equal 
right. Have all been equally imposed upon 
and robbed by the rich? No, not equally, of 
course, but all have been imposed upon. Then 
some who own ten millions have been seriously 
imposed upon by others who own twenty, and 
they by those who own a hundred, and so 
throughout the entire body politic. If all have 
not been equally robbed, you would, of course, 
only have yielded back in proportion as each 
has been robbed. Would any other reimburse¬ 
ment be just? 


74 


POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 


Here the co-operator, seeing the impractica¬ 
bility of his position, usually becomes irritated. 
By this, however, nothing is accomplished. Some 
jump at the entire system and say they would 
have everything owned by the state—complete 
co-operation; others want so-called natural media 
alone yielded up to the state; others, various 
industries, such as railways, telegraphs, high¬ 
ways, and the like—partial co-operation. If 
complete state ownership means only ten cents 
per day or less, and not even that unless pro¬ 
duction is kept up to what it now is, then 
partial state ownership means even less than 
this small per capita gain. By no means, there¬ 
fore, except by increased production, can all 
men gain anything worthy of consideration— 
why? Because there is not enough existing 
wealth to make ALL comfortable for any 
great length of time. 

Obviously, then, comfort can come to all 
only by accumulating more wealth. But, say 
the co-operators, what signifies more accumu¬ 
lation if a few only are to be made richer 
even than now? More accumulation means 
that those who conserve what they get will 
have more. If they get more and do not con¬ 
sume or squander all they get, they will be 
more comfortable j but if only more is pro- 


POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 


75 


duced, though the many get no more, the few 
will get more, that is, the rich will get richer. 
If the rich get richer and conserve and reinvest 
as large a part as they have done in all past 
time, then more wealth will exist and access to 
it will be easier, or rather interest rates will he 
less. Even this will benefit the poor very 
much. 

But how can more be produced ? By work¬ 
ing harder ; that is the only way. More work, 
more product; less work, less product. This 
u more work ” may be accomplished by in¬ 
creased facility, that is, by the utilization of 
other forms of energy than that energy pro¬ 
duced by the oxidation of carbon food-pro¬ 
ducts in the body of a man. The means most 
generally in use by which to secure this in¬ 
creased energy is the oxidation of coal. If 
coal is worth $5 per ton in New York, 
that is equivalent, we will say, to the labor of 
three men for one day. By the most approved 
appliances, one horse-power of energy can be 
had for one hour from two pounds or less of 
coal. Ere long one pound will be made to 
yield one horse-power per hour, and even this 
will be scarcely 20 per cent of the total energy 
there stored up. A ton of coal (2000 lbs.) 
will then produce two thousand horse-power 


76 


POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 


for an hour, or two hundred horse-power per 
hour for a day of ten hours. Thus three men 
have been made equal to two hundred horses 
in energy. This means either more, better, or 
cheaper products to that extent, less the cost 
of wear and tear and interest on the machinery 
by which it is done. But, says our objector, 
have we not stores of goods now locked up 
which the people have no money to buy? 
Have we not houses vacant that people cannot 
rent? To which the reply is, Yes, but we have 
none out of which labor has not already re¬ 
ceived its reward. Would you have less of 
these? If so, then the thing to do is to de¬ 
stroy them. No, I would make them accessible 
to the people. Would you give them to the 
people, or advise the people to take them by 
force ? If so, how long would the people be 
benefited? Certainly not long, unless more 
things were continually produced. I would 
continue to produce, and continue to make 
them accessible to the people. Would you 
make existing and produced goods accessible 
to the people by gift? No, certainly not. 
Then how ? I would enable them to buy the 
goods. But how? To buy means that you 
enable the people to give something in ex¬ 
change for the goods; how would you provide 


POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 


77 


the people with this something? Have the 
people not labor to exchange for them ? 
Labor has already been used to produce these 
goods and paid for, and whenever he who 
wants more goods, wants more labor, he will 
and does gladly give his goods or their equiva¬ 
lent for that labor or its equivalent , less the 
interest on his capital wear and tear. But 
when he does not want more goods, are you 
going to force him to take more labor? If 
he wants no labor, he cannot use it advan¬ 
tageously nor profitably, and soon he will have 
no commodities, and simply hold in lieu thereof 
a tender of labor for which he has no use. 
There must he something produced by your 
labor, else you create the same state of affairs 
that would exist if you simply took the goods 
and consumed them, thus producing a tempo¬ 
rary benefit, hut making all forms of wealth 
thereafter harder to get by reason of scarcity, 
and later impossible to get by reason of non¬ 
existence. But, says the objector, when we 
have consumed the goods, then there will arise 
a new demand. But you have consumed 
something for which you gave no product in 
return, hence the world is poorer to that extent; 
and when the demand again sets in, you simply 
make good the depleted stock, and society is 


78 


POLITICS FOP PPUDENT PEOPLE. 


no forwarder. To permit wealth to be con¬ 
sumed broadcast, wherever it has been accumu¬ 
lated to a certain extent, for the purpose, as 
some advocate, of u giving work to the masses,” 
is but to destroy that you may again repair, 
or tear down that you may again build up ; .and 
the world would never have got beyond bar¬ 
barism under such a plan, and would not get 
beyond its present state if such a plan were now 
instituted; aye, more than that, it would turn 
back towards and ultimately reach barbarism, 
on account of the necessary loss in the process 
unless said loss were made good by increased 
production. If the loss is thus fully made 
good, society is stationary; if it is made a 
little more than good, then there is just a little 
accumulation of wealth ; which leaves us in just 
as much worse condition than before as our 
accumulated wealth is less than it was before. 
Then, says our objector, if goods exist beyond 
demand, how can we produce more when more 
are not wanted or when the people cannot get 
them ? Those people who have accumulated 
the product of their labor in some form can 
get them and consume them, but of course 
those who have nothing but the ability to labor 
cannot get them unless their ability is wanted, 
which we have seen is not always the case, and 


POLITICS FOP PBUDENT PEOPLE. 


79 


if forced produces loss and ultimate retro¬ 
gression and barbarism. 

Those people who cannot get the goods 
have already consumed or squandered their 
share of the goods and now have no value 
to exchange. The others have not, hence 
they begin to consume, now, what the others 
have consumed long before. They were more 
conservative, that is, they were better and wiser 
specimens of their race. Men must suffer from 
the evils of their infirmities, disabilities, pro¬ 
fligacy, or waste, or else that suffering must be 
borne by others; that is to say, men must get 
their living, or others must give their living to 
them, or they must die. Men who can get a 
living must not be forced to yield it up to 
others, which all schemes of co-operation in one 
way or another contemplate. 

There is no justice except to leave to each 
man to do what he voluntarily wishes to do for 
his fellow-man who is weaker than himself, 
and whatever is done makes the whole so much 
the poorer, because the poor specimen has con¬ 
sumed that which he did not produce and which 
would otherwise have been accumulated or con¬ 
sumed, to the betterment of better survivors. 

It is no doubt true that with present appli¬ 
ances more of almost any commodity can be 


80 


POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 


produced than can be consumed in the ordinary 
run of consumption. That is to say, more 
shoes could be made if all factories ran full 
time than would be worn out even if all people 
could get what the average well-to-do man 
wears. So with steel rails and almost anything 
else. More houses can be built than would be 
needed with the present ability to use, and so 
to the end. 

What does this mean ? It means that as 
soon as time has positively determined that 
demand for quantity has been met, quality will 
be more rapidly improved. Instead of produc¬ 
ing three pairs of poor shoes, there will be pro¬ 
duced two pairs of better shoes; that is to say, 
competition will tend towards excellence, to 
which there can be no maximum limit. This 
tendency of course goes along with quantity, 
but quantity being less in demand, quality 
will increase faster. Accumulated wealth will 
seek investments at continuously lower interest 
rates. The poorest shoes will in time be as 
good as the best are now, and the best as much 
better than now (handsomer, if need be, by or¬ 
namentations or otherwise) as it is possible to 
imagine. The poorest house will be as good 
as the best is now, and the best will be gilded 
palaces of inconceivable splendor. The aver- 


POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 81 

age will be higher and higher. But how 
will this he so ? Wealth seeking investment 
observes that it is useless to build another 
house, for interest, by reason of the plethora 
of houses, would be low. Wealth then con¬ 
cludes to make better and nicer than it is some 
existing house, or, if it builds a new house, offers 
a better house for the same interest. Of course 
the old house either has its price forced down 
or the better house is taken at the same price. 
So gradually as to every form of wealth. The 
greater the accumulation, no matter who owns 
it, provided it is not ostentatiously or impru¬ 
dently squandered, the better it is for society— 
for all people. Of course each individual would 
prefer to own wealth himself. He can the 
more easily own if there is more wealth to own. 
The man who conserves wealth is the greatest 
benefactor to his fellow-men. His conservation 
benefits himself first, but thereafter, by adding 
to the sum total of wealth and reducing inter¬ 
est rates, he is a benefactor to all. The rich 
man in society differs from the poor man only 
in this: He is his own employer and deter¬ 
mines his own salary, that is, he can expend for 
his living as much of his income as he desires, 
to its limit. 

Now, if he expends or consumes his en- 
6 


82 


POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 


tire income he adds nothing to the world’s 
wealth, and, having no accumulation to invest, 
does not tend to reduce interest. He is a poor 
custodian, and his ostentatious expenditure must 
he discouraged. Rather, he must he encouraged 
to reinvest, that is, to get richer so that access 
by the people to the use of wealth will be 
cheaper. He must be discouraged from hold¬ 
ing for his own private enjoyment these valu¬ 
able things, and use his wealth in development 
for further gain. Fortunately nature develops 
some men who are willing to conserve vast 
amounts of wealth, and pay themselves only 
comparatively small salaries for their service. 
They build houses that they are willing to let 
people use at the rate of $5 per hundred for 
a year, or less, and do the repairs themselves. 
They build railways on which people can ride 
twenty miles for five cents, when, if this wealth 
had not been accumulated and conserved, people 
would have to walk, not go at all, or go in some 
more expensive manner. They build great 
bridges, great ships, and other vast improve¬ 
ments. Without accumulated capital there 
could be no such improvements. To say that 
these men (accumulators and reinvestors of 
wealth) are not benefactors to the human race 
is to speak unwisely. If they divided their 


POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 


83 


wealth they would do a positive injury. Let 
them keep it and take care of it for the people 
to use at the lowest rates of interest. 

But, continues our co-operative philosopher, 
if what we want is more wealth, and if, as we 
see, there now exists wealth stored up in abun¬ 
dance which the people cannot get by reason 
of having nothing but their labor to exchange 
for it, and if this labor is not wanted, how are 
they to use their labor so as to produce more 
wealth? Give them access to the earth, say 
some co-operators. But they now have access 
to all of the earth for which labor product has 
not already been given by some other man or 
men. What is labor ? It is a process, not an 
entity. It is the exercise of energy to move or 
change things. When we say people have 
labor to exchange, we simply mean that they 
have the ability to perform labor, that is, to 
exert energy in moving things. They have not a 
thing or entity to exchange for another thing or 
entity, but simply have the ability to go through 
a process called labor or work. Now, there is 
not in any storehouse or warehouse or depot 
anywhere in the world to-day a mass of wealth 
stored up out of which the laborers who pro¬ 
duced it did not get and have paid over to them 
an allotment for their labor representing perhaps 


84 POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 

nine-tenths of its value. That is to say, if Mr. 
A. owns one thousand suits of clothes stored 
up in his warehouse, these clothes have cost 
him what he has already paid out to the labor¬ 
ers who produced them, and also the interest 
on his plant and appliances. This is true of 
every house in the world and of all existing 
wealth. 

Be the share that the laborers have received 
enough or not is another question. They have 
got out of these very clothes their allotment of 
their value in some other form of value. Now, 
obviously their labor cannot be used a second 
time and he paid for a second time in produc¬ 
ing these same clothes. If, however, they 
have not consumed their allotment of the value 
of the clothes, they can get all the clothing 
that they have value to exchange for them. 
But they have in most cases consumed the 
value that they received, and consequently 
have nothing to exchange hut their ability to 
work. But, says our co-operator, they had to 
consume it to live. Then they cannot consume 
it twice. If they eat the cake they cannot 
also have it. Shall the owner of the clothes, 
who has already paid for the labor expended 
in their production, again pay the laborers be¬ 
cause they have consumed what he previously 


POLITICS Foil PRUDENT PEOPLE. 85 

paid them? When the owner of these clothes 
gets other people, who have value, to exchange 
it with him for the clothes, then he will call in 
his laborers and again pay them for producing 
more clothes, that is, again give them an op¬ 
portunity to exercise their energy. But how 
are they to live in the meantime ? asks our co- 
operator. They should have so managed their 
expenditure as to have lived off of or out of 
their original allotment of the clothes they or¬ 
iginally produced. Some of them did so man¬ 
age, and these do not suffer want. Greater 
production means either more in quantity or 
an improvement in quality. To say that more 
cannot be produced because unfrugal laborers 
wantonly and foolishly consumed their allot¬ 
ment of . what is produced, is to say that pro¬ 
gress and the increased utilization of facility 
and cheaper forms of energy are impossible. We 
know that each hour to-day there is produced a 
very much greater output per capita than there 
formerly was, because we are utilizing other 
forms of energy than that produced in the body 
of a man. But for this we should not have 
one-half or one-fourth of the number of com¬ 
modities that we do have, and the price of these 
would be much higher. Just as, by this pro¬ 
cess in the past, production has been greater, 


86 


POLITICS POR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 


so by the enlargement of the same process 
production will be still greater. This means 
better standards of living and greater content¬ 
ment, if comfort and the possession of things 
that conduce to it mean contentment. To 
quote Mr. Tilden again: “ I would giv6 all 

the legerdemain of finance for the homely 
maxim of live within your income” If, by co¬ 
operation, existence for incapables and malinger¬ 
ers is made easy, there will be more of them than 
there are. It is unfortunate, aye, it is painful, 
to see a state of society in which a good man 
who wants work cannot get it. There are such 
cases, but there are not many relatively to the 
whole. If such a man were the only one on the 
earth, and had access to everything on or in the 
earth, he might yet die by inability to get what 
he required to live, though he be ever so will¬ 
ing to exert himself, as millions have died 
through the ages that men have struggled for 
life on this terrestrial ball. The inability to 
get work that we see in society is the same 
thing identically as that of primitive man who 
struggled and yet failed to get the wherewith- 
all to live. The only safe remedy against this 
condition of affairs is to conserve the product 
of work when we are fortunate enough to have 
work to do. It is much better that labor 


POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 87 

should be employed in the production of useful 
and durable things than in ostentatious and 
perishable things. Expenditures by the rich 
for the latter result only in a percentage of 
profit to those who supply, being to this extent 
a distribution of wealth ; but the entire value 
of the purchase is soon consumed, or it per¬ 
ishes, hence the community is poorer. Wealth 
expended for labor employed in producing last¬ 
ing improvements benefits the whole people 
much more than wealth expended for labor 
employed in producing costly flowers, costly 
wines, the food and garniture of the banquet 
board, rich tapestry, laces, and the like. Such 
expenditures cannot, of course, be prevented; 
hut they should not be encouraged. It is a 
mistake to say that ostentatious expenditures 
by the rich benefit the poor as much as frugal 
expenditures for durable things. 


88 


POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 


CHAPTER IV. 


Artificial tilings are natural things moved—No unnatural 
things—The state, what is it ?—Co-operation means retro¬ 
gression—Habitability of earth by living forms—Social 
centripetal and centrifrugal forces—Co-operation as ap¬ 
plied to railways and coal mines—No gain of conse¬ 
quence to the people—Not enough wealth to make all 
comfortable—Wealth must increase faster than popula¬ 
tions—Trusts natural, and not hurtful—Governmental 
functions might be curtailed—Post-office under private 
control—Desirableness of avoiding business interferences 
—Cumulative residential taxation not hurtful—Poverty 
will be mitigated, not cured. 

Either it is better that the property of 
a country or, if need be, of the world, be 
owned by one man, or by all men (which means 
public ownership), or by some number between 
one and all. It is perhaps better that those 
own it who do own it, for that condition is the 
result of all the agencies that bear upon it, and 
they are infinite. We are but the actors of a 
myriad of impulses, and what we do is as much 
the result of natural law as what we are. All 
things are natural, and all things move, that is, 
are changed, naturally. Of the absolute either 
in being or in motion we can get no conception. 


POLITICS FOIi PKUDENT PEOPLE. 89 

Sufficient for our purposes is it, therefore, 
to consider all things as natural. If not 
natural, then they or some of them must be 
unnatural. 

Disregarding ultimates or absolutes, we will 
say that things that are not natural are arti¬ 
ficial. 

What, then, is an artificial thing? It must 
be a natural thing by a process —“ by a cir¬ 
cumbendibus/’ as Coleridge said about the knave 
and fool. For, as wrote the greatest poet of 
them all: 

“ You see, sweet maid, we marry a gentler 
scion to the wildest stock, and make conceive 
a bark of baser kind by a bud of nobler race. 
This is an art which does mend nature—change 
it rather. But the art itself is nature .” 

All things, then, to which man and his ef¬ 
forts are related must be treated alike, for all 
are natural. What is the state ? 

In primitive times there was no state; later, 
by the subjugation of small tribes by larger 
tribes, and by the killing off of weaker individ¬ 
uals by stronger individuals, the king became 
practically “ the be all and the end all 
here.” 

As man’s inward restraints became greater, 
that is, more highly developed, their outward 


90 


POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 


restraints, that is, the power of this king, became 
less. 

This process is going on now, and will con¬ 
tinue until each individual is essentially king. 

Governments as now constituted will vanish. 
That process will be slow and much time will be 
required to fully accomplish it. Even co-opera¬ 
tion may first intervene, but that will not last. 
Just as certainly as consciousness is in the in¬ 
dividual, just so certainly towards the independ¬ 
ence of the individual must our higher life 
ultimately tend. Differentiation of function 
and, in consequence, interdependence of being 
must exist, aye, increase; but this is not co¬ 
operation of function by any means whatso¬ 
ever. Each man, to produce the best results, 
must yet pursue his own special line and be 
availed of his special reward, else his efforts will 
be thwarted. 

Life, at the stage now attained by man, is 
very complex. The thoughts produced by 
human brains are likewise very complex. Some 
tend in certain directions so strongly as to disre¬ 
gard the reactionary effect of any action they 
propose. This is, of course, natural. Now, it 
may be that the thoughts of so many men will 
tend towards co-operation as to institute that 
system in society. Its effect, that is, its re- 


POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 


91 


action, will be degeneration, and, if persisted 
in, barbarism. 

If from the monad to the lowest man strife, 
adaptation, and survival have been the order of 
nature under which life has advanced, how 
comes it that between men themselves, between 
the low r est and highest of w hom there is a great 
gulf, it should cease? If cease, where along 
the line from Pithecanthropus erect us to the 
philosopher does it cease ? Or is it to cease just 
now or at some later day, and if later, how 
much later—when ? 

Hoping for better things men may institute 
radically altered conditions. Seeing that these 
conditions fail, they will change them again 
and again, and so till the “ last syllable of re¬ 
corded time.” 

As long as a temperature between 32° and 
132° or thereabouts is maintained on the planet 
earth, its life-forms in some shape will doubt¬ 
less continue to exist. That mineral called 
water, which is essential to life, and which forms 
a large part of all living things, that is, of all 
things capable of vital excitation, freezes at 
32° F. It is converted at once into gas at 
212° ; and at 130°, or thereabouts, it forms gas 
with considerable rapidity, sufficient to cause 
considerable pressure in any cell, perhaps enough 


U2 POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 

to distend or destroy it. Hence, then, below 32° 
and above 130° or thereabouts, life would not 
have evolved, things would not have become 
vitally excited, and could not long remain so. 
Of that infinite range of temperature, there¬ 
fore, between absolute zero—minus 500 or 
thereabouts—and that of the hottest star (per¬ 
haps many millions of degrees), it is between 32° 
and 132° substantially that things can become 
vitally excited. Life, as we know it, therefore, 
may not exist anywhere else, because it is not 
probable that out of an infinite range of tem¬ 
perature the narrow life-span exists. Our 
planet will therefore one day be lifeless. 
Forms that have advanced gradually will decay 
gradually, be the conditions what they may ; 
but social degeneration can be expedited by the 
development of thoughts and desires that will 
bring about a status the reverse of that by the 
operation of which advance has been made 
throughout countless aeons of eternal time. 

We do not expect to find a modern CEdipus 
to solve the riddle of the Sphinx. If that 
riddle be society, it may never find its CEdipus. 

Society cannot be solved until mankind as 
individuals are solved. To change society 
from what it is at any one time, is to change 
men of whom society consists. 


POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 93 

What, then, signifies it to propose to do this 
or that; to cure this social evil, or to cause to 
be or not to be this certain policy ? It means 
nothing if men are not ripe for the change. 
That is, it means nothing: lasting;. 

7 o o 

A code of rules to govern things as they are, 
might, aye, would be, very different from a 
code of rules to govern things as they should 
be. What a moral man should be may be 
one thing, and what a moral man is in the 
opinion of his fellow-men at any given time 
and place is quite another thing. 

Co-operative control of properties signifies 
control by men as they average, or their repre¬ 
sentatives of properties now owned and con¬ 
trolled by men that have been selected by the 
impartial hand of survival. Aside from the 
effort of these latter men to get higher and 
higher, they are inherently better than the 
average because of the very fact that they have 
been selected. 

These men will therefore handle these proper¬ 
ties much better than the inferior wow-selected 
men will handle them. If not, then they will 
handle them worse , for things cannot be 
equally poised, because they are constantly 
changing. But let us assume that these in¬ 
ferior men, and men not prompted by reward 


94 


POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 


for effort, will handle the properties as well as 
the superior and directly rewarded men— 
what then ? 

Let us take the railways of the United States 
for example. It is proposed by certain advo¬ 
cates of partial co-operation that all lines of 
transportation and means of communication 
shall be owned and operated by the govern¬ 
ment. Why is this change sought ? Pri¬ 
marily if not wholly because it is believed 
that a few men get very rich in the prosecution 
of these enterprises, and it is desired that these 
riches shall inure to the benefit of or be dis¬ 
tributed among all. At bottom this must be 
the reason, or else what is the reason ? It may be 
held that the state can operate these properties 
more cheaply, hence can give cheaper transpor¬ 
tation to all the people. If it takes so many 
horse-power of energy to lift a weight, it will 
continue to take just the same amount of 
energy, whether exerted and expended by 
people as individuals or by people as represent¬ 
atives of individuals, which alone the state 
functionaries are. If it does not take as much, 
then it will take either more or less. It 
can certainly take no less if equal weights are 
lifted, that is, if equal obstacles are moved or 
overcome. Hence for equal train service over 


POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 


95 


equal mileage there must he expended equal 
energy and the machinery will be subjected to 
equal wear. If equal energy is expended, then 
an equal number of men must be employed 
and an equal amount of fuel must be consumed ; 
or, if a less number of men are employed and 
less fuel is consumed, the men must work 
harder or for longer hours and the fuel must 
produce more energy per ton of weight. This 
cannot be denied. 

Now, would there be any saving in the pro¬ 
cess method or mode of management ? If all 
railways were managed by one company there 
would be a saving. That is, a railway trust 
would promote specialization. This may be 
accomplished in its proper time. Public own¬ 
ership, however, would remove the incentive for 
gain, hence promote the tendency towards loss. 

There is one item of expense under the pri¬ 
vate system that would be saved under the 
public system, hut it would likely be offset by 
other items of expense. This item is fees to 
lawyers. Legal controversy, however, is not 
so much between the various lines themselves 
(though in the formative process of railway 
operation this is considerable), as it is between 
the public and the railway companies. Claims 
for personal and property damage represent 


96 


POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 


a vast bulk of the business, for the care of 
which lawyers are employed. Claims caused 
by pernicious and damaging legislative inter¬ 
meddling are numerous, also by individuals 
for discrimination in rates are not small, and 
these might be somewhat abated under govern¬ 
mental control. But a railroad can afford to 
haul large amounts of desirable freight for less 
than small amounts of undesirable freight. If 
under governmental control this was not made 
available it would cause loss. That is to say, 
if the government gave the same service and 
as low a price to costly transfer as to wow-costly 
transfer, the government would lose by the 
operation, and the earning of the road relative 
to expense of operation would be less. 

But, say our co-operators, we would make 
all rates as low as the lowest. Then your 
roads would earn less than now, and the people 
would have to be taxed to maintain them as well 
as to buy them, and provide for deficiencies 
besides. In the first place, the roads would 
have to be bought. To dispossess railway 
men of their property would be no more just 
than to dispossess farmers of their farms. It 
is not worth while to argue 'with men who 
would dispossess without adequate recompense. 
Then, if the roads must be bought they must 


POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 


97 


be paid for. We will pay for them with gov¬ 
ernment bonds, say the co-operators. Well, 
then, the bonds must one day be paid and the 
interest on them must be currently handed 
over to the bondholders. How is the fund 
to pay for the roads and interest on the pur¬ 
chase to be secured ? Evidently it must come 
from somewhere. It must come from taxation. 
Then the people are to be taxed to pay for the 
roads. But, says the co-operator, the people 
would have the roads. Yes, but they would 
not have what they have paid out for the 
roads. The railroads are stocked and bonded 
at about ten billion dollars, an amount almost 
treble the entire national debt at the close of 
the war and many times the existing debt. 
True, the roads did not cost and are not worth 
that sum to-day. Neither are their owners 
receiving five or even four per cent on that 
amount. But let us assume that the owners 
are receiving four per cent on that amount— 
what then ? If the government could not 
operate them for less than the present private 
owners can, then the government would have 
to charge the same that is now charged, or the 
government would not make even four per 
cent. Men would yet have to operate the 
roads the same as now. Men are not more but 
7 


POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 


usually less efficient when working for the 
government than when working for a private 
corporation. Government jobs are always 
considered easy or “fat” jobs. If they are 
not more efficient, they must be less efficient, 
as before noted. 

If employed by the government their posi¬ 
tions would be very much under the influence 
of political favoritism or prestige. This would 
not assure efficiency for railway service. All 
told, it would place at the disposal of the gov¬ 
ernment railway department about a million 
men as there are almost that number employed 
in transportation service. If the one hundred 
thousand or so officials who are now chosen in 
the main by public patronage are objected to, 
as by many people they are, what would be the 
condition if a million or so more were similarly 
employed by the railway department alone? 
But suppose by government operation, that is, 
by charging the same and by the same efficient 
operation (which is almost a preposterous 
assumption), the government did gain 4 per 
cent above all expense of operation, repairs, 
wear and tear, and the like—what then ? The 
department would have gained about $400,- 
000,000 per year. This would not more 
than pay the interest on the purchase, so the 


POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 


99 


people would have gained nothing ; that is to 
say, they would have paid the same traffic 
rates and gained nothing, not even enough to 
create a sinking fund for the payment of the 
principal at maturity. But let us suppose that 
the government, by the rude hand of might, 
simply took possession of the roads and paid 
nothing whatever for them—what then ? The 
cost of operation as above, being at least the 
same and very likely much more, the govern¬ 
ment would then only have made the $400,- 
000,000, which, estimating the population at 
70,000,000 people, would be a saving to each 
of less than six dollars per year, or not two cents 
per day including Sundays, which would he 
fully offset by increased rents and interest. 
Does any advocate of co-operation doubt that 
this is substantially correct? 

If so he must doubt first that 4 per cent on 
$10,000,000,000 is $400,000,000, and that 
$400,000,000 is only about $6 per year for 
70,000,000 people. 

He must doubt, secondly, that properties of 
all kinds are more efficiently managed when 
reward directly follows effort than where it 
does not directly follow effort. To doubt these 
postulates is to doubt that man himself is as 
he is. 


L. of' 0. 


100 POLITICS FOE PRUDENT PEOPLE. 

Furthermore, be it remembered that this 
$400,000,000 implies no payment for interest on 
purchase, but that the roads were simply taken 
from their owners by force. If an interest 
charge is allowed for, the people get no cheaper 
service and the department yet runs behind. 
Certainly this is not sufficiently inviting to 
reasonable men to justify them in advocating 
so radical a change. 

When large amounts of wealth are handled 
by a few men, the masses look on in wonder 
and are amazed. Their cupidity is excited and 
their avarice is made keen; hut when these 
amounts are divided among all, all means so 
many that the amount to each becomes ridic¬ 
ulously small. Any system of co-operation 
must mean all , for to take from a few hundred 
railway magnates and give to a few thousand or 
even a few hundred thousand politicians would 
certainly be a worse state of affairs than the 
former was before. It is millions to mills 
that any system of co-operation—complete or 
partial—would result in a gain to no one save 
a political bureaucracy which would he most 
infamous and venal, to say nothing as to the 
diminution of production consequent thereon. 
It cannot be too forcibly impressed upon the 
people that there is not yet enough wealth in 


POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 101 

the world to make everybody comfortable 
very long . 

We will now consider coal and ore lands and 
co-operative public control. If one man owned 
all the coal in the world, or, say, in America, lie 
would be a poor man if he owned nothing else 
and refused access to his coal, He would not, 
of course, prefer to die and cause all other men 
to die, by refusing said access to his coal; and 
if coal were indispensable to life, such a policy 
would mean his and all other men’s death. If 
such a policy could possibly be imagined, then 
the ultra vires would have to step in. The 
worst thing that could happen would be that 
he should ask for his coal “ all the traffic would 
bear.” Experience shows that he would fare 
better by a more reasonable policy that would 
encourage greater consumption. 

If the charge were all the traffic would bear, 
even then his gains, less what he privately en¬ 
joyed, would be reinvested in producing wealth 
for interest, with its attendant beneficent results, 
as heretofore shown. Be it remembered that 
as long as people can get access to wealth at 
that constantly declining rate of interest which 
accumulated wealth insures, the people are not 
injured, but benefited . Access to crude media 
and to wealth is exactly the same. Given 


102 POLITICS Foil PRUDENT PEOPLE. 

much media and a few men, access is easy and 
rent cheap. The same is true of wealth. 
There is no occasion for an economic distinc¬ 
tion between rent and interest. Permanent 
increase of population will increase rent, and it 
will also increase interest just the same unless 
wealth increases as fast as population. Rents, 
or the price for the use of crude media, will 
doubtless tend to he higher and limber; but so 
will interest or the price for the use of wealth, 
unless wealth is kept apace with increasing 
population ; but the desideratum is to increase 
accumulations of wealth not only as fast as, 
but faster than, we increase population, then 
interest rates will fall. 

This can be done only by greater production 
and greater conservation. Now, if all the 
wealth that private individuals now accumulate 
from coal lands were added to the four-hundred 
million that we have assumed to be accumulated 
by individuals from railroads, the aggregate 
would be very little more for the whole people 
if it too were divided. This means that if the 
coal lands were bought and operated by the 
public, after paying interest, or even without 
paying interest, the whole people would be but 
little richer or more comfortably conditioned. 
The price for mining and transporting the coal 


POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 108 

would be the same, or else labor could not be as 
well paid as it now is. The only gain would be 
the profit now obtained by owners, which, after 
paying interest, would be small, as we observe 
as to the railways. 

If this is true as to railroads in general it 
would be true of railroads in particular, that is, 
with municipal railways and the like, and also 
true as to telegraphs, telephones, and the like. 
If true as to coal, it would be true as to iron 
and other kinds of ore, and as to oil and tim¬ 
bered lands and the like, and true also of all 
forms of production. The profit or gain per 
year from all is only about three per cent on the 
total wealth, which gain, if distributed, would, 
as shown, to the whole, be only about $30 per 
year, or less than ten cents per day. 

What object, therefore, is there in altering 
our present conditions if at best only so small 
a benefit could directly result to the whole people, 
which, indirectly, would be a curse, because it 
would be consumed and the accumulation of 
wealth, the only possible salvation for mankind, 
be prevented? Where there is not accumula¬ 
tion there must be dissipation, and where there 
is dissipation there must come ultimate bank¬ 
ruptcy, which in society means ultimate barbar¬ 
ism. Some say that barbarism is better than 


104 POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 

tilings as they are. It is sufficient to say 
to these: Go, live among the barbarians, for 
there are many of them yet on the earth. You 
need not convert what civilization we have into 
barbarism, for many of us object to that state 
of life. 

It may not be amiss just here to take briefly 
into consideration the matter of trusts. What 
is a trust. Most people will say that a trust 
is the effort upon the part of a few men to 
monopolize trade. Suppose it is—what then? 
Can it be prevented without reactionary loss ? 
In any business a man has the right to sell 
any part of his wares to whomsoever will buy. 
This means that he has the right to sell all his 
wares to whomsoever will buy. This means 
that he has the right to sell his plant or 
machinery to whomsoever will buy. 

Do we want to prevent this, and if so at 
what place shall we prevent it? Shall he not 
be permited to sell more than half, or more than 
one-fourth ? or what amount of his wares may 
he be permitted to sell ? Obviously he cannot 
rightfully be prohibited from selling any part, 
which means that he may sell all , as above set 
forth. 

Then Mr. A. buys the business of Mr. B. 
at prices mutually satisfactory. If he pays for 


POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 105 

B.’s business in other forms of wealth or in 
shares of his own business, the case is the same, 
for if B. took other forms of wealth he (B.) 
would if he chose exchange that wealth for 
shares of stock. Now A. and B. conclude to 
buy C., and C. concludes to sell. This process 
is carried on till all businesses of importance in 
any line are bought and merged into one big 
business by the mutual consent, aye, by the 
eager desire, of all, it may be. They see in the 
consolidation a great advantage in the way 
of increasing facilities and prospective gain. 
They want it so. Now, who is to say they shall 
not have it so, and if anyone can rightfully so 
say, then their right to sell is thwarted. How, 
practically, can the state say whether they may 
sell their business or not. If it can so say, it 
may say they cannot sell a ])art or any part. 
But, say the objectors, they must not combine 
against the public. 

They reply that they did not combine against 
the public, they simply sold—A. to B., and so on 
throughout the whole. How can the state de¬ 
termine as to the motive ? They sold because 
they thought it to their interest to sell. This 
results, if not in the thing called a u trust ” 
in something the bearing of which is the 
same as a trust. 


106 


POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 


Then, say the objectors, we will tax the 
trusts out of existence. 

This was the position assumed as to indi¬ 
viduals under the Phronocratic proposition as 
advocated some years ago; but even that did 
not favor it as to corporations , because it 
recognized the fact that great combinations of 
wealth were not only desirable, but necessary . 

Trusts are the result of movement along 
lines of least resistance, and as long as they are 
movements along these lines, so long will they 
be organized or created by the purchase and 
absorption of smaller u trusts .” The limit of 
their profitableness will one day be reached, 
and then they will cease without the useless 
and futile interposition of legislative enact¬ 
ments such as anti-trust laws. To inveigh 
against concentrations of Avealth, which alone 
trusts are, is as futile as to inveigh against the 
king of floods because it is what it is by 
reason of the accumulation of the waters of 
its tributary streams. Trusts, it is claimed, 
crush out small competitors, hut Iioav? Only 
by offering better goods at the same price, or 
by offering the same goods at loAver prices. 
People do not so love trusts as to patronize 
them otherwise. They cannot force the people 
to aid them in crushing out the small com- 


POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 107 

petitor. No, the trust survives because the 
people want the service it offers. They want 
the service because it is either cheaper or 
better. When a trust ceases to give such ser¬ 
vice as the people want, away goes the trust for 
want of popular support. But, says the ob¬ 
jector, trusts get hold of the supply of com¬ 
modities that the people must have. If the 
people object to this they should prevent it; 
but, as we have seen above, they aid—aye, 
cause it to exist—because they will not pay 
anti-trust producers a higher price than the 
trusts ask. The owners of trusts are accu¬ 
mulators and reinvestors of wealth, which 
wealth they gain by the patronage of the 
people and in no other way save by their own 
excellence. To absorb these trusts and operate 
them by the public, as is proposed with other 
leading industries, opens up the same objection 
as that which was shown as to said industries. 

If, then, governmental ownership of trusts or 
of the leading pursuits or industries, which is 
partial co-operation, results in no possible con¬ 
sequential gain to the people at large, but most 
likely in a very probably consequential loss to 
the people at large, neither is partial co-opera¬ 
tion a good system to adopt. 

If the <rovernment cannot extend its busi- 

O 


108 POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 

ness functions to advantage, that is, so as to 
produce gain or rather greater accumulation 
of wealth, then either the government now 
stands in its best possible attitude towards 
business, or if its business functions were made 
less than they are, that would be better. 
Which of these two conclusions are we to 
adopt? Again let it be asked, What is a 
government? Without going into details as 
to sociological evolution, it is fair to conclude 
that all governments are to-day about what 
the people are, on the whole, content that they 
shall be, or, rather, what the people have made 
them. If in the most tyrannically oppressed 
powers of eastern Europe and Asia the people 
were not on the whole substantially content 
with what they have, they would change it. 
But, say some, they cannot change it. If a 
sufficient number were sufficiently eager, they 
could and would change their governments. 
In the United States the government presum¬ 
ably derives all its powers from the consent of 
the governed, which, as shown, is substantially 
the case everywhere. The question then is, 
are the functions which the people consent that 
the government shall exercise the functions 
that it is best for government to exercise ? 
Powers of government must be exercised by 


POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 


109 


men. These men are simply the agents of 
the people. 

In what respect is it that people need to 
be governed ? In respect of their individual 
unrestraint. People who sufficiently restrain 
themselves seldom feel the pinch of govern¬ 
ment at all, and if all people sufficiently re¬ 
strained themselves, then government need be 
nothing but the administration, by a few un¬ 
important agents, of a few rules for the con¬ 
venient and speedy execution of a few unim¬ 
portant functions. If people gain nothing by 
turning over to agents things which they 
could as well or better perform themselves, 
why turn this business over to these agents? 
Differences of opinion as to what can as well 
or better be done by agents result in the per¬ 
formances of such functions as these agents 
are performing at any given time or place. 
The Constitution of the United States, art. 1, 
sec. 8, contains seventeen short paragraphs 
setting forth what Congress shall have power 
to do. 

1st. Lay and collect taxes. 2d. Borrow 
money. 3d. Regulate foreign commerce. 
4th. Establish naturalization laws. 5th. Coin 
money. 6th. Provide for punishing counter¬ 
feiters. 7th. Establish post-offices and post- 


110 POLITICS FOIt PRUDENT PEOPLE. 

roads. 8th. Grant patents. 9th. Create 
Courts inferior to the Supreme Court. 10th. 
Declare war. 11th. Support armies. 12th. 
Support navies. 13th. Regulate the army 
and navy. 14th. Call out militia. 15th. 
Provide for training the militia. 16th. Con¬ 
trol the District of Columbia. 17th. To carry 
these powers into effect. It would scarcely 
have been anticipated in 1788 that in a little 
more than one hundred years thereafter 356 
representatives, 88 senators, and a president 
would collect and expend over half a billion 
of dollars per year in pursuance of the above 
Congressional powers. Most of these powers, 
however, relate to protection against foreign 
aggression and domestic insurrection, and the 
collection of funds with which to defray the 
expense thereof. Foreign commerce if let 
alone would be regulated by natural exchanges. 
The coinage of money and the maintenance of 
the post-office are about the only important 
provisions not contemplating protection against 
aggression and insurrection. The post-office 
business might have been left to private enter¬ 
prise, thus saving, at the present time, a loss of 
about ten million dollars annually, and curtail¬ 
ing governmental patronage to the extent of 
many thousand officials. It is no argument 


POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. Ill 

for governmental control to cite the post- 
office as an example, because no trial of a pri¬ 
vate system with which to compare it has been 
permitted, and if permitted, the governmental 
system would most likely be entirely supplanted 
by more efficient private service. The service 
is now done, save for city deliveries, by con¬ 
tracts for transportation with private com¬ 
panies. These companies of right make a 
profit, hence it goes without saying that the 
business could be as well, as cheaply, and as 
expeditiously done if it were wholly private 
enterprise. If not, then a man works better as 
a public agent than as a private employee, 
which is a proposition that cannot be sus¬ 
tained. Postal service would be rendered 
wherever it could be done on business prin¬ 
ciples, as is express and telegraphic service. 
If not rendered on business principles it 
should not be rendered at all. 

Express Companies under private ownership, 
when they can do like service, do it cheaper. 
They now carry newspapers in many parts of 
the country at government rates, and, if given 
the entire business, would doubtless do it at 
cheaper rates and yet make profits where the 
government sustain great losses. Telegraph 
business was once done in England by private 


112 


POLITICS POP PRUDENT PEOPLE. 


companies and made money. It is now done 
by the government at higher rates and loses 
money. It is the same with railways under 
governmental control in Australia, Germany, 
and France. Congressmen now secure the 
establishment of post-offices and post-road^ as 
a reward to their constituents for electing them 
to Congress or as an inducement for re-election. 
The same would be true as to railway lines 
and telegraph lines. Just as a Congressman 
is made popular by securing an appropriation 
for a post-office building, so, to a far greater 
extent, would they seek popularity by getting 
appropriations for the construction of railways, 
telegraphs, and the like. 

It is not the object of this work, however, to ad¬ 
vocate radical or quick changes in anything. It 
is very likely that time will cause a tendency even 
greater than now towards a co-operative system, 
but that will give way by its own weakness, and 
then the functions of government will be placed 
and kept within their proper and rightful sphere. 
The present imposed tax system, the so-called 
protective feature of which is now acknowledged 
by unprejudiced and disinterested men to be a 
costly form of aggression and discrimination, 
must not be abolished at once. The principle 
of direct taxation on all fixed property should 


POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 


113 


be determined upon and then applied as other 
forms are gradually abandoned. Ten years 
from a fixed date might be required for ad¬ 
justment and rearrangement; but these are 
details that must be regulated at the time. 
How much better it would be for the business 
interests of the country, and consequently for 
the entire country, if the government would 
simply confine itself within its only proper 
sphere, that of securing justice between conflict¬ 
ing interest and preserving order. This would 
leave enterprise of all kinds to be prosecuted 
on the basis of the reward of individual effort 
—the only true basis, and the only basis that 
can result in an onward march towards better 
condition of life for all the people. How much 
better it would be, also, if the government 
would collect its revenue for its proper func¬ 
tions, from fixed property direct, thus relieving 
the business community of the vexatious and 
at times disastrous uncertainties of a change 
of duties on imports and the like ! The impo¬ 
sition of taxes for governmental support ought 
not to he a question in politics at all , and 
would not be such but for the fact that many 
people erroneously believe that other ends, 
aims, and objects than simply producing rev¬ 
enue, can be subserved or stimulated by a tax. 

8 


114 


POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 


It is not claimed that the private property 
cumulative taxation will stimulate, but that it 
will discourage the holding of private wealth 
unproductively. Taxation rightfully has but 
this one function—namely, that of raising rev¬ 
enue. If even incidentally to that process there 
comes either a stimulation or oppression, either 
or both cause loss by reactionary influences. 

It appears then that the government can¬ 
not work benefits by imposing taxes other 
than to support such beneficent functions as 
could not otherwise he supported, and the 
benefit is not then derived from the tax hut 
from the function that the tax renders capable 
of being performed. If this function is bad, 
the result is bad; if good, the result is good. 
What, then, constitutes a good and what a 
bad function ? On this proposition people 
will reasonably differ. Some definite and 
proper conclusion may he reached regarding 
these questions by assuming what all admit, 
viz.: that government has a good function in 
maintaining order and preserving domestic 
tranquillity. If devoted entirely to that it 
will become specialized for that, and can, of 
course, do it more efficiently than if its efforts 
are differentiated so as to cover many func¬ 
tions. If this is not true, then specialization 


POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 


115 


in no thing tends towards efficiency in that 
thing; and if specialization does not thus tend, 
then differentiation does thus tend—which is it 
that tends towards efficiency? If specialization 
does not, then why are men who devote their 
attention exclusively to the treatment of the eye 
or ear, or any other special branch, considered 
the more efficient, aye, why are they in fact the 
more efficient ? Let the government take on 
only that function for which it is best adapted, 
and let it become specialized for that; and let 
individuals take on functions for which they 
are best adapted, and become specialized for 
these, and progress will be faster, surer, and 
safer, and, furthermore, justice will he more 
properly administered. If these beneficent 
results will not follow, then malevolent results 
will follow—which will most likely follow ? 

It is not proposed, however, that the 
government shall relinquish such functions 
as it now performs, at once. It is proposed 
that the tendency towards the enlargement of 
these be stopped. Things are as they are as 
an unvoidable result of many influences. 
Among these influences are the operations of 
men’s brains along certain lines which cause 
certain conclusions. The object is to show 
what is thought to be the unwisdom of 


116 


POLITICS FOP PRUDENT PEOPLE. 


certain tendencies, and thus, first, to check 
those tendencies, then to institute new im¬ 
pulses directed along lines more in keeping 
with that tendency which has advanced the 
monad to the man, and which if undisturbed 
will yet advance man higher than he is. Any 
value that is taken away from rich men and 
given over to the state or to all men, must 
cause some loss in the process of exchange. 
There is a loss in collecting any tax whatsoever, 
that is to say, what is collected cannot he ap¬ 
plied in full to its purpose because of the cost 
of the labor in doing the service. It follows 
then that the simpler and more direct the pro¬ 
cess is, the less the labor required will be, hence 
the greater will be the net amount that is ap¬ 
plied to the purpose intended. So, though 
simple and direct taxation causes a loss, the 
loss is less than it is by complicated systems. 
The country is made poorer by every tax that 
is collected, because of the cost of collection, 
and because the product of the tax is consumed. 
If a country could go on without taxation, other 
influences remaining the same, accumulation 
would he more rapid. Let, therefore, the least 
possible functions that are supported by taxa¬ 
tion he done, and the richer will the country 
become. Taxation can only be made low by 


POLITICS EOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 117 

causing to be small the functions that it sup¬ 
ports ; hence let governmental functions he 
the smallest that is possible. It is scarcely 
necessary to allude to the greater honesty and 
lack of discrimination that would be assured 
by a simple system as against a complicated 
system. The propriety of discriminating 
against rich men, even to the extent of impos¬ 
ing a cumulative tax on such of their estates 
as are held for exclusive private enjoyment, 
may he properly questioned on the same ground 
of gain or loss to the community. It is held, 
however, that the gain here will he more than 
the loss, for it simply encourages investment for 
further gain rather than that wealth shall he 
held without possibility of further gain by 
being privately absorbed and consumed. The 
community benefits by having access at the 
current interest price. To give the community 
access for nothing, be it remembered, soon 
results in the consumption of all wealth. It is 
certainly better to have a long lease of life 
than a short revel in luxury. Is it true that 
“ The poor ye shall have always with you ” ? 
Is it true that there will be large trees and 
small trees as long as trees can exist at all ? 
This is true or else all will be small trees. It 
is so with everything. Poverty, when we con- 


118 POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 

sider the many influences that operate to pro¬ 
duce all states in which things are, is the re¬ 
sult in most cases of incompetency, that is, 
of a poorly-conditioned organization. Under 
this head come many influences, such as indo¬ 
lence, improvidence, and many others. These 
influences can be traced back through genera¬ 
tions, and in the vast majority of cases the in¬ 
competency is attributable to the ancestors 
rather than to the subject. He is strong 
bodily or mentally (barring accidents which 
have their causes and with sufficient knowledge 
could be traced out) according as his ancestors 
were so. What a man is, barring influences of 
his environment after adult age, we may say, 
is either inherited directly from or filtered 
through his parents. Even the effect that en¬ 
vironment has on him after adult age is at¬ 
tributable to a condition that he has inherited 
from his parents or through them. Unfit sub¬ 
jects, therefore, are not themselves entirely to 
blame, if in fact they are at all blamable. 
Now we must admit that some mountains are 
larger than other mountains, and that some 
men are larger than other men. It is also 
true that some mountains contain more gold 
and some more iron than other mountains ; 
and it is also true that some men possess more 


POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 119 

brains and brains of better thinking powers, 
also larger and stronger muscle and nerve sub¬ 
stance than other men. However, men do not 
get rich solely by their own muscular exertion, 
but they do begin to get rich in that way. The 
next step is to accumulate some wealth, and to 
get interest on that wealth, then to secure 
facility, then to employ other men. Other 
men prefer to be employed, aye, must take em¬ 
ployment, because their own lack of facility 
prevents successful competition. The em¬ 
ployer reinvests and reinvests his interest 
gains and thus becomes rich. Nothing will 
equal compound interest. But all riches begin 
with small accumulation, and all poverty begins 
and most of it continues by unwise dissipation. 
The best possible advice to a young man 
is begin to save something early in life. A 
dollar saved at twenty is, at 7 per cent in¬ 
terest, worth two saved at 30, and four saved 
at 40, and eight saved at 50. He who in early 
life acts on this truth is not likely to suffer 
from poverty. 

So to the question, shall poverty be always 
a feature of society ? Speaking in relative 
terms, yes. Even though wealth were so 
plentiful per capita that enough of it to en¬ 
able one to live as comfortably as the average 


120 


POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 


workman now lives could be obtained for one- 
tenth the labor now required, it is easy to see 
bow some men might not get even that amount 
unless some other men gave it to them. So, it 
matters not how abundant wealth per capita 
is or how easily it could be obtained, some-men 
might not get it, hence they would be poor. 
Some men might get enough by working a day 
to last them a week if properly used, and they 
might, as very many do, indulge in a drunken 
or other revel for one night and thus become 
poor till their resources were again budded up. 
In any state of society men must take heed for 
the morrow , else they are liable to be and re¬ 
main poor. As men become better, fitter, and 
wiser beings, they will to a greater extent than 
now take this heed. Every man should strive 
to consume less than he produces, that is, to 
live on less than he makes. If he is an ambi¬ 
tious man, who desires a higher standard of life, 
that ambition will stimulate him to get and en¬ 
joy better things. But to avoid the likelihood 
of the pangs of poverty he must u lay aside 
something for a rainy day,” else when that 
rainy day comes, unless he trespasses upon 
the generosity of his friends, he will be poor. 
To those with whom the days are all rainy 
days, be it said, you are liable to be always poor. 


POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 121 

But, it is said, a man cannot save any¬ 
thing and support his family on his meagre 
earnings. Had he been a wiser man than he 
was he would have considered this before he 
got a wife and family. Failure to thus con¬ 
sider was another of his shortcomings or unfit¬ 
nesses for survival. Be it said as to poverty, 
as wealth per capita accumulates, there will be 
less of it, because wealth will be easier to get. 
Even then there will be some poverty until 
men figure to make both ends meet better than 
they now do. Figuring thus means to take 
heed for the morrow and to consider where 
you are likely to be as well as where you are. 
Some co-operators hold that the condition of 
mankind to-day, when wealth per capita is 
$1,036, is worse than it was in 1850, when 
wealth per capita was only $308. These 
co-operators are mistaken. So obvious is the 
error that illustrations are useless. Mankind 
was never so well conditioned as mankind is 
to-day ; and when wealth per capita is greater 
than we find it to be to-day, then and not till 
then will mankind be better conditioned than 
mankind is to-day. 


122 


POLITICS FOB PRUDENT PEOPLE. 


CHAPTER V. 

CITIZENSHIP, SUFFRAGE, ETC., ETC. 


Suffrage—Should be based on residential rent or taxation— 
Representation should be similarly apportioned—Distinc¬ 
tion between residential rent and taxation—Inequality and 
injustice in U. S. Senate—Bicameral and unicameral 
legislative bodies. Female suffrage will cause loss—It 
will prevent specialization of function—It will be non- 
effectual in causing better conditions. 

The government of the United States is 
supposed to be a representative government. 
It is not, strictly speaking, such, nor ever was. 
T1 le desire for state and local autonomy has 
prevented strictly representative conditions. 
It is not representative as to population or 
wealth. Should a government be representa¬ 
tive as to population, or should it be represen¬ 
tative as to wealth—which ? Most people will 
say, as to population, of course. Is that plan 
of representation conducive to better results 
than representation as to wealth or property 
would be ? 

All representation except that called govern¬ 
mental is now on the basis of wealth or prop- 


POLITICS FOIl PRUDENT PEOPLE. 123 

erty. The individual custodian or owner of a 
piece of property represents or manages it to 
the exclusion of any other person unless it be 
one of his own appointing. A private corpo¬ 
ration is managed by its stockholders in the 
ratio of their interests or by representatives of 
their own appointing. All property excepting 
the government holdings is owned by private 
individuals separate or by private individuals 
corporate. If the management of all property, 
which alone supports government, is based on 
interest and not on population, why should not 
the government be managed on the same basis ? 

Why is it proper to say that though every 
man has not the right of a voice in deter- 
ming the management of property, yet he should 
have the right of voice in the management of 
that part of property which is yielded up for 
its own protection ? We have representation 
on the basis of interest as to the property 
itself, but as to its contributions to (he state, 
representation is on the basis of population. 
It matters not how or from what source taxes 
are gathered, every man that lives, unless sup¬ 
ported by another man, pays taxes. Still all 
men get something in return for these taxes 
provided government is of any value to society. 
If of no value it should be abolished. 


124 POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 

It is, however, at least now, and for some 
time to come will be, valuable. The 
value returned by the government is protec¬ 
tion, justice, eminent-domain suzerainty. Then, 
all men except those who are supported by 
other men pay taxes, because, be the original 
subject of the application of the levy wherever 
it may be, it follows that subject to its con¬ 
sumption. Taxes on fixed properties tend to 
increase rents, but other things exempted from 
taxes thereby tend to be lower. Now , if all 
men contribute toward governmental support , 
then it woidd seem proper that representation 
and suffrage should be on the basis of said 
contribution . It may be held that there is 
really no contribution in the strict sense of 
that term, but that it is simply an exchange— 
a quid pro cpio —and that the value given up in 
taxation is returned by the value of the govern¬ 
mental suzerainty. Be this as it may, reason¬ 
ing on close lines, yet the tax is value paid out, 
and the suzerainty is not an inventoriable 
quantity at the end of the year. Then men 
pay taxes on the basis of their consumption of 
the subject-matter that is taxed. 

We propose to tax only fixed property, ex¬ 
cepting all other kinds of property. Now, 
when an owner rents his property, the tenant 


POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 


125 


pays the tax on the property as part of the 
rent. But for the owner’s tax, rents would 
tend lower. The owner only pays taxes abso¬ 
lutely on property that he does not rent, to wit, 
his private residence, private park, or coun¬ 
try seat, seaside villa, or the like, or, rather, 
on that very property on which it is proposed 
to levy the cumulative tax. It is only residen¬ 
tial use that represents ultimate consumption of 
fixed property. Stores, warehouses, hotels, and 
farms used for agriculture are business proper¬ 
ties ; and the taxes they pay are shifted on to 
the commodities handled therein or produced 
thereon by an increase of price to the pur¬ 
chaser. Hence we reach the principle that 
suffrage and representation shall he on the 
basis of ultimate tax paid on fixed residential 
property. We have suggested that this basis 
he about $100 for the tenant and $20 for an 
owner. 

Why do w r e make this distinction ? He who 
rents for occupancy a residence does not shift 
his tax to another consumer, as a storekeeper 
does by putting a higher price on his goods. 

He who owns a residence does not shift his 
tax on to a tenant. Now, the total amount 
collected for all purposes of taxation at present 
is about one billion dollars annually, the na- 


126 


POLITICS FOIl PRUDENT PEOPLE. 


tional being above half, and all other purposes 
nearly half that amount. On a valuation of sixty 
billions, or thereabouts, to which aggregate 
by 1900 fixed property will doubtless go, a 
rate would be required averaging about 11 
per cent. By the more economical administra¬ 
tion of affairs that is proposed and by more 
thorough and complete assessments, that rate 
might be reduced. Six per cent net on the aver¬ 
age maintains estates at par. Allowing 2 per 
cent average tax and 2 per cent for vacancies 
and repairs, we have 10 per cent gross. A tax 
rate of 2 per cent would be about one-fifth of 
rent, which would not exceed the average. 
Hence the tenants who paid $100 in rent 
would be paying about $20 in taxes, the 
balance going to the owner for interest or 
rent. All the owner paid on his residence 
would be for taxation absolutely. Hence the 
basis of $100 for one vote for a tenant, and 
$20 for an owner of residential property, 
each $100 and each $20 to entitle the in¬ 
dividual to one vote, but no fractional part 
thereof; said votes or vote to be cast wher¬ 
ever the residential property is located. There 
would be no complication in this system. A 
man paying $100 per year rent for a resi¬ 
dence gets one vote. If a man lives in a 


POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 127 

store and owns it, then if that part used for 
residence is estimated to be valuable enough to 
pay $20 per year of the whole tax, he votes. 
If he rents it, then that portion occupied as 
residence must be estimated as worth $100 
per year of the whole rent, and the renter 
votes. The same with hotels. Landlord- 
farmers, whose residences are valuable enough 
to pay $20 per year of their whole tax, vote. 
The residences of tenement farmers must bring 
$100 rent. This covers the whole list of 
possible voters, and is far simpler and less 
complicated than any other qualification could 
possibly be. Of course each man must be able 
to read and write English besides. Further¬ 
more, it is just and proper, and is based on the 
real equities of the situation. As a concession 
to the renter it might be advisable to make the 
basis for owners and renters the same; but 
this would not be strictly equitable , as has 
been shown. 

It may be held that patrons of hotels, shops, 
restaurants, and the like, paying for the wares 
sold in these, really pay the tax and should 
vote. Tax paid on these enables neither the 
owner nor the renter to vote; and if the said 
patrons have no fixed habitation or residence, 
they are movables, and it is not proposed to 


128 POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 

tax movables, nor to extend to them the vote. 
Representation based on an enumeration of 
votes thus ascertained and qualified would be 
truly representative. However, while the 
present constitution of the United States is 
the supreme law of the land, there can be no 
truly representative government in their na¬ 
tional legislature on account of the state repre¬ 
sentation in the senate. 

Two senators from each state are provided, 
and the provision cannot be altered by amend¬ 
ment. So fearful were the original colonies 
that their identity would be lost or their local 
institutions be infringed upon, that gross in¬ 
equities were permitted in the national legis¬ 
lature. 

The necessity for local autonomy is not now 
so great as it then was, and the injustice of 
equal representation in the senate is much 
greater than it then was. That states repre¬ 
senting one-tenth or less of the wealth and 
population represented by other states should 
have an equal voice with the latter in the 
upper legislative body is little short of mon¬ 
strous. It is more than simple injustice. 

Its effect for damage has been and will yet 
be seen more glaringly unless it is in some 
way altered. 


POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 


129 


It cannot, however, he altered under the pres¬ 
ent constitution. For the purpose of regulat¬ 
ing internal affairs the states may well be auton¬ 
omous, but in the national legislature injustice 
prevails that will long remain unremedied. 

The purpose to be subserved by a bicameral 
legislature is prudence or the avoidance of 
haste in legislation. The so-called “ higher 
body ” is advisory. It should be chosen by 
and from the lower body, say one-third every 
two years. This would be quite as representa¬ 
tive as the first body, which comes direct from 
the people, only it would change more slowly. 
The best men, that is, the men in longest and 
most honorable service in the lower, would, 
other things and influences equal, be chosen to 
the higher body, just as such men are made 
chairmen of committees and presiding officers of 
the bodies to which they belong. The execu¬ 
tive should be chosen from and by the higher 
body. No man could become a member of 
the higher nor be chosen executive until the 
people had first chosen him to the lower body. 
Vacancies in the lower caused by elections 
from it to the higher would of course be filled 
by the people from whose districts they come. 
This plan would prevent millionaires, inexpe¬ 
rienced aspirants, from buying up state legis- 
9 


130 POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 

latures, and would tend to raise the average of 
statesmanship and ability in the higher body 
as well as in the executive chair. In other 
words, it would constitute a kind of evolution¬ 
ary legislature growth and perfection. This 
plan would be applicable, of course, to munic¬ 
ipalities, states, and nation. All the people 
would do would be to elect the first body, out 
of which would proceed all the rest on lines of 
fitness or quality. Furthermore, when these 
bodies were thus constituted, it might be well 
for them to elect all other public servants, just 
as they now pass laws, and they could remove 
these officials just as they now repeal laws. 
Both bodies and the executive would be re¬ 
quired to elect or remove, or two-thirds of the two 
bodies, without the executive, could do either, 
even remove the executive himself, and, say, 
four-fifths of the lower might act independently. 
These bodies would be more capable of choosing 
officials to execute the laws , just as they are more 
capable of passing the laws originally, than 
are the people at large. This would relieve 
immeasurably the trouble, annoyance, cumber¬ 
someness, and expense of elections, as well as 
lessen the corruption and dishonesty thereof. 
The people, duly qualified, would vote only 
for councilmen, assemblymen, and congress- 


POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 131 

men, say, every two years, or one-half each 
year, if so preferred; and then these would 
elect the higher body and the latter the Mayor, 
Governor, or President. The legislative bodies 
and the executive, thus chosen, would elect all 
judges in their respective jurisdictions, and all 
other officials, just as they now pass laws. 
They could be chosen for fixed terms as now, 
or remain for life or until removed, just as laws 
remain till repealed. 

A system of judicial promotion might be 
similarly provided, which would constitute an 
independent judiciary much superior to the 
present elective judiciary, from which latter all 
bias cannot be eliminated. The present jury 
system is a travesty on civilization. All causes 
should be tried before competent and indepen¬ 
dent judges. It is better to be tried by a jury 
of our superiors than by a jury of our peers. 

All power would proceed from the people 
originally and be changed by them in due 
course, so that the system could not be op¬ 
posed on the ground of being anti-republican 
in its leaning:. It is as useless for the whole 
people to elect minor officials, whose duties are 
simply to execute the laws, as it is for the whole 
people to pass the laws themselves, which is 
now rightfully the province of delegates chosen 


182 


POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 


for that purpose. The initiative would be the 
popular choice of the lower house, and a suffi¬ 
cient referendum would be the power to change 
that lower house each year if need be. These 
changes are, of course, not practicable now, 
even if by the majority they were thought de¬ 
sirable. Such a plan would, however, insure 
wiser men, because they would be selected men ; 
and wiser and more experienced men would 
enact wiser laws and choose better officers to 
administer those laws. Under the present con¬ 
stitution no change depriving each state of two 
senators could be made without the consent of 
the states, but the plan of suffrage herein pro¬ 
posed could be adopted by a majority. 

Having suggested an alteration in the present 
system of suffrage as to men, it may be proper 
to consider briefly the suffrage question as to 
women. “ Male and female created He them,” 
or in the process of evolution sex differentiation 
resulted, of which man and woman are the high¬ 
est type, or man and woman otherwise came to 
be what they are or appear to be. One or the 
other of these propositions is correct ; it 
matters not, for the purposes of our inquiry, 
which. Reproduction is one of the two 
essential conditions of existence. Birth is the 


POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 


133 


other, and death the end of that existence. Has 
woman a different sphere in life from that of 
man ? Either she has or she has not. In the 
process of conception, gestation, and parturition, 
it will not be denied that woman’s sphere is 
different, hut must be admitted that it is ex¬ 
clusive. In the process of nourishing and sus¬ 
taining the young, if not exclusive, it is almost 
so. When sustenance is otherwise adminis¬ 
tered than through the mother, the best 
results do not follow. Up to this point, then, 
it must be admitted that woman has a sphere 
that differs from that of man. It is not so ex¬ 
clusive at the sta^e of the nourishment of the 
young after birth as before. But it is yet dif¬ 
ferent. Women, normally conditioned, can 
nourish their own offspring better than it 
can be otherwise done. Either this is true or 
it is not. Then, throughout the process of 
nutrition up to the process of dentition, and 
usually thereafter, woman’s separate sphere 
continues. Now, it either continues till the 
offspring is mature and fully able to care for 
itself, or it ends somewhere between dentition 
and said maturity. If it ends, where does it 
end ? Is it when the young is two, ten, or 
twenty, or at some other age, and if some 
other age, what age ? Whenever the child is 


134 


POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 


able to care for itself, some will say. But at 
what age is it able to take care for itself ? 
Some children are better able at ten than 
others are at twenty. Then, some will say, 
for that child able at ten to take care of itself, 
all parental care can be withdrawn. Then it 
will of course be admitted that until all pa¬ 
rental care be withdrawn it is better that the 
mother continue her care, because as yet 
we have not found at what age the sphere, 
admitted to exist exclusively at first, and 
separate until some later time , ceases to 
be separate. Can we find this time ? If 
there is a time when the mother is not better 
adapted, that time should be easily ascertained. 
If that time be a period whilst yet the child 
needs care, it follows that after that time the 
father is better adapted if the mother ceases to 
be better adapted. It will be answered that 
each case can be settled on its own merits. 
Then, if there be one case when a child at two, 
or ten, or at twenty, cannot be better cared 
for by its mother, then there comes a time 
when that child can be better cared for by 
its father. Then, as to that child, the father 
must devote his time to domestic labor 
instead of the mother. This forces the 
conclusion that the mother must devote her 


POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 


135 


time to other or outside labor, or said outside 
labor will remain undone. If the child needs 
to be cared for, some one capable of so doing 
must do so, else it is not done. If other labor 
must be done to secure food, some one capable 
of so doing must do that labor, or it is not done. 
Then shall both mother and father labor to¬ 
gether at domestic duty half the time, and at 
outside labor—bread-winning—the other half ? 
Either this is better, or it is better to allow dif¬ 
ferentiation or specialization to work its way, 
and instead of doing jointly all things, do 
separately those things for which each is best 
adapted. 

Since we find that specialization has worked 
its way till now, it is fair to conclude that 
this course is the course of least resistance. 
If this is changed it must be changed at a 
loss, first from the inadaptability of each for 
the duty of the other, and, secondly, in the 
process of the change. We failed to find just at 
what age, if any age, women are not better 
adapted than men to perform domestic labor. 
This means that if women cease to perform it 
and men begin to perform it, it will not be as 
well performed, hence loss, or, rather, less 
excellence in the product or result. The same 
is true of the performance by women of duties 


136 POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 

now specialized for performance by men. If 
women are not as well adapted to these duties 
they will not be as well done, and here also 
will be a loss, or, rather, diminution in the 
quantity or quality of the product. If each 
do the duties of the other equally well, then 
there is yet a loss in the process of the transfer. 
Either, then, women must do what they are 
now doing by specialization, and men do what 
they now do by the same decree, or their duties 
must be reversed, or they must be done jointly. 
Done jointly opposes specialization, from which 
most all excellence arises, hence causes loss in 
excellence, which is a great loss, and loss in 
quantity also, which is a greater loss. 

We have seen that to transfer their duties 
would also cause loss. Be it remembered that 
the duty must be performed, hence must be 
performed by the labor of one or the other 
or both. Now, to extend to women the 
right of suffrage must mean the right to hold 
office and to perform all public duties that men 
now perform. Some, of course, will vote, and 
some will be elected to office. How many we 
cannot say. To the extent, be that what it 
may, that they will perform duties which 
they do not now perform, they will be called 
away from the performance of the duties that 


politics for prudent people. 


13T 


they do now perform. Then these latter 
duties must be not performed , or men must 
perform them. Oh, it will be said, another 
woman can be employed. Yes, but she is 
taken away from duties that she hitherto per¬ 
formed. We have seen that, if men perform 
these duties which cannot now be performed 
by women by reason of the fact that they are 
performing public duties or electioneering for 
office, the duties will not be as well per¬ 
formed by reason of man’s unadaptability. 
Hence there is a loss. If women do not per¬ 
form public duties as well as men, then there 
is another loss, added to which is the loss in 
the transfer. 

It may be said that women now do much 
work that men previously did almost exclusively. 
True, and they may yet do more; but if 
these women have any domestic duties to per¬ 
form, to the extent that their labor is other¬ 
wise occupied or consumed, the domestic duties 
suffer. In society as a whole there are domestic 
duties to be performed. Children are born, 
and they do need to be cared for. We do 
have home life, and that must be looked after. 
If in society at large women do what men now 
do, men must do what women now do or they 
must do all things jointly, as before remarked. 


138 POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 

The latter causes loss by preventing specializa¬ 
tion, and the two former by unadaptability, and 
a third loss is caused in the process of transfer. 
But, even though it were shown beyond doubt 
that women are better adapted than men as 
breadwinners and for the performance of out¬ 
side labor, and that men are better adapted 
than women to bear and nurture children, how 
much better adapted are they ? Is it sufficient 
to overcome the loss in the transfer ? If not, 
then there is yet a loss. If we should admit 
that women are better adapted as breadwinners 
than men, we cannot admit that men are as 
well adapted to bear and nourish children as 
women, hence here is a loss unless the superior 
excellence of the woman in the man’s sphere 
more than offsets the inferior excellence of the 
man in the woman’s sphere. 

But what would be the result even if there 
would be no loss ? It is impossible to conceive of 
any general law or social condition that would 
benefit men as a class that would injure women 
as a class. Nine-tenths or about such proportion 
of the men in the civilized world marry between 
the ages of about twenty and forty. This 
means, of course, that about the same propor¬ 
tion of women marry between these years. 
Now, as regards its bearing towards the outer 


POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 


139 


world, the family is either a unit or it is not. 
As regards most things it is a unit. What¬ 
ever benefits one benefits the other, and vice 
versa , as long as they live together in har¬ 
mony. This implies that the attitude of both 
man and wife towards outside things must be 
substantially the same, otherwise there is dis¬ 
sonance. If their attitude is the same they 
would likely vote the same. In fact , we find 
that in actual life they are substantially in 
accord on all public questions; yes, on most 
all questions; hence if women voted there 
would be an increased number of ballots and 
no alteration of consequence in the result; 
increased cumbersomeness and no increased 
efficiency. If women are more moral than 
men, they can influence, each her own hus¬ 
band, towards moral conduct to a greater 
extent than all women through the ballot- 
box could moralize all men. There are many 
women who are better qualified to vote than 
many men; but all women are not better 
qualified than all men. When women are 
intellectually superior, they will largely con¬ 
trol and direct their husbands’ votes. The 
number of women who have no husbands is 
small. Under the qualified system of suffrage 
herein proposed, that is, one vote for every 


140 POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 

$100 paid iii residential rent, or one vote 
for every $20 dollars paid in residential 
taxation, the question would arise, are not 
man and wife one as to their residential 
state ? 

For these and many other reasons useles’s to 
delineate, we think female suffrage is not ad¬ 
visable, at least in the present state of society. 

A few words as to universal suffrage 
among men will perhaps be in order. Looking 
to the interests of the masses alone, universal 
suffrage is injurious. In a little over one hun¬ 
dred years under that system in America the 
contrast between wealth and poverty is as great, 
if not greater, than it is under a thousand years 
or more of restricted suffrage or of no suffrage 
in Europe. Certain it is, then, that those who 
complain of things as they are cannot attribute 
the condition to restricted suffrage. If, then, 
suffrage affects it at all, in America, at least, it 
must he unrestricted suffrage that is to blame. 
Neither has had much to do with the condition 
that now confronts us. A man who does not 
know how to use a weapon usually uses it to his 
injury if he uses it at all. Men who do not 
know how to vote, and who are not capable of 
discriminating between good men and bad men, 
or between good measures and bad measures, 


POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 141 

must be controlled and directed by men who 
are better qualified. This condition creates a 
demand for the professional politician and elec¬ 
tion organizer that would not exist to the same 
extent , at least, if the voters were more capable. 
It is through these instrumentalities that men 
are chosen who, to a greater- extent than other¬ 
wise, can be influenced in conferring favors or 
valuable privileges on so-called monopolists. 
The greatest harm, however, that these men 
do is to intermeddle with business affairs in 
quest of propitiation, or further preferment. 

Here, again, many well-meaning men make 
the error of concluding that the millions are 
outraged if they do not vote. If not en¬ 
couraged by these sentimentalists the millions 
would not seriously complain. It was not the 
negroes, en masse , in the South who clamored 
for the ballot, but politicians, seeking party 
aggrandizement, who gave it to them. The 
folly of the proceeding is now obvious to all. 
It goes without saying that a qualified man is 
better fitted to vote than an unqualified man. 
Of course, degrees of qualifications on the basis 
of knowledge cannot be established. But all 
candid men will admit that a man who cannot 
read and write the language of his country 
should not vote. There is but one basis on 


142 


POLITICS FOB PRUDENT PEOPLE. 


which it is possible to subserve the ends of justice 
in this matter, and that is the basis of interest , 
or contribution to governmental support. 

If it is claimed that all men are inter¬ 
ested, hence that all should vote, it cannot be 
claimed that all are equally interested, hence 
that all should equally vote. The minimum 
of qualification must rest somewhere. Let it 
rest on ability to read and write and on a mini¬ 
mum contribution. Thereafter multiples of the 
minimum ability and multiples of the minimum 
contribution would subserve the ends of justice ; 
but since the former is impracticable, let the 
latter be established. If $100 dollars to a resi¬ 
dential renter and $20 to a residential taxpayer 
is not the proper basis, then let some other basis, 
on these lines, be adopted that is more nearly 
correct, and conditions will be equitable. If this 
system were established, proper social reforms 
could be much more easily instituted because 
qualified men can be reasoned with, whilst un¬ 
qualified men must be led, driven, or bought. 

It is a mistake to say that the rich would 
more oppressively than now legislate in their 
own interest. They could not legislate that a 
man should work for less than his labor will 
command ; they could not legislate themselves 
richer nor poorer. Wealth and poverty are 


POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 143 

not brought about in that way. To the extent 
that legislation coukl alter existing conditions 
at all, it would be on the line of greater con¬ 
servation of wealth, lower taxation, and less 
public wastefulness. This would benefit all 
men. The character and quality of represent¬ 
ative bodies would be higher, and privileges 
that legislative bodies bestow would be granted 
on more businesslike terms. Executive offi¬ 
cers and judges of the courts would be men of 
higher standing and be further removed from 
the temptations that so frequently arise to 
thwart the ends of justice. The salaries of 
most all public officials, especially judges , 
should be higher than they are, so as to com¬ 
mand better talent and insure less venality, for 
“to lapse in fulness is sorer than to lie for 
need, and falsehood is worse in kings than in 
beggars.” 

oo 

The ultimate tendency of higher civilization 
will most likely be towards curtailing all gov¬ 
ernmental powers (when co-operation has had 
its full trial), and towards the nationalization 
of such powers as are retained. This will be 
so because the central power of every nation 
is as near to-day to its utmost limits as the 
central power of some townships was a century 
ao’o to their utmost limits. Later on this ten- 


144 POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 

dency will nationalize the world, and this will 
be a consummation devoutly to be wished. Then 
all wars will be ended, and the energy of mil¬ 
lions, now directed towards destruction (killing 
and tearing down), will be directed towards 
production and building up. All the military 
force that will then be required will be in the 
nature of a police patrol to suppress domestic 
insurrection. Nothing in the line of soldiery 
will be required for foreign aggression or 
national defense. The sentiment of national 
patriotism and pride is less to-day than it used 
to be; and, as people begin to look to their 
government for less, and to their own produc¬ 
tion for more, national pride will become still 
less. People love their locality on account 
of its associations, its climate, its hills, its moun¬ 
tains, and its meadows. This they will continue 
to do, but they will not fight to determine what 
king shall tax them for the purpose of ruling 
in pomp and splendor over them. They will 
fight rather to have no king, and agree to pay 
no tax to support governmental functions that 
they can as well or better perform themselves. 
How unreasonable it is to suppose that man, 
naturally a lover of freedom, when even more 
highly evolved than now, will consent to a sys¬ 
tem that makes him a slave—slave not to some 


POLITICS FOP PPUDENT PEOPLE. 


145 


monarch, feudal despot, or lord, but to some 
petty tyrant raised up by co-operation to appor¬ 
tion out tlie products of bis industry among 
millions, who, either by indolence or by incom¬ 
petency, are but barriers to the progress of in¬ 
dustry ! Had civilization live or ten thousand 
years ago been sufficiently advanced to circum¬ 
navigate the globe in fifty-seven days, there 
would now in all probability be but one lan¬ 
guage, one currency, one standard of weight, 
and one of measure. This would facilitate 
international or world-wide exchanges, just as 
uniformity in these now facilitates interstate 
exchanges. 

This would render the expenditure of energy 
in the process of exchange less, leaving the 
energy to be expended in the process of pro¬ 
duction greater. As during the past we can 
see marked tendencies in this direction, so 
in the future there will be greater tendencies. 
Already the metric system is practically world¬ 
wide. Though not current, it is lawful in 
America; already we hear almost universal 
admission that bimetallism (never advisable) 
is possible only under international agreement. 

As people come into closer relations with 
one another, as they do when facilities for 
intercommunication become greater, there tends 
10 


146 


POLITICS FOE, PRUDENT PEOPLE. 


to be brought about an average between their 
extremes. If two persons equally bright speak 
different languages, and if both languages 
are equally difficult of acquirement, they will 
create a language midway between the two, or 
substantially that, if they are thrown much to¬ 
gether. 

So with all things. That language or sys¬ 
tem which is the best adapted will cause 
those less well adapted to tend more largely 
toward it. Aside from local peculiaritieSj which 
have no consequent world-wide bearing, any 
social condition, or social status, or social law 
must affect all people in practically the same 
way. Though they differ in ethnological char¬ 
acteristics and are more advanced or less ad¬ 
vanced in what is called civilization, yet all 
human beings are budded out of substantially 
the same kind of stuff. They differ in their 
powers to overcome obstacles or resistances. 
Each is entitled to the free and uninterrupted 
right to exercise his power relatively to the 
others. Just as all earthly forms are acted 
upon by what we call “ natural law ” in prac¬ 
tically the same way, so they should be acted 
upon by what we call “ artificial ” law in 
practically the same way, because the latter is 
simply the former by a process. Uniformity 


POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 147 

and simplicity of process is quite compatible 
with multiformity and complexity of things, 
all depending upon proper adjustment. 

In the politics of America to-day (1896), 
there are really no vital issues that should 
enter into politics. The tariff and the currency 
are not proper political issues. Taxes should 
be imposed on fixed property to secure what 
the government needs, and the currency should 
be based on fixed property and gold coin ; and 
then both these issues should be let entirely 
alone. 

There are, however, vital and pressing issues. 
These are: Shall unrestricted democracy, 
Socialism, Communism, Populism, and the like, 
towards which there are strong tendencies, be 
permitted to destroy our republican institutions 
and convert our civilization into barbarism, or 
shall they not ? Men who oppose this ten¬ 
dency, as most prndent men do, should arise 
from the apathy in which they now lie bound, 
banish the vandals from the temples, the fools 
from places of preferment, and establish the 
government on the basis of prudence , wealth , 
and progress , without which decay is certain. 
Co-operation of any kind means decay . 


148 


POLITICS FOE. PKUDENT PEOPLE. 


CHAPTER VI. 

Money, one standard—For the present gold—Circulating 
medium on fixed property valuations—Government not 
properly a bank of issue—Quantity should be based on 
business needs—Direct taxation renders possible fixed 
property basis—Objections to governmental issue. 


There are yet many people who believe that 
things that are needed can he brought about 
or caused to exist by taxation. This much of 
the proposition might for a time appear to be 
true, but if ever true it has an answerable re¬ 
sult which, though it may not be obvious, yet 
exists. Nothing was ever taken away from a 
man even for the support of the simplest func¬ 
tion of government without making that man 
poorer, unless he counts as inventoriable assets 
the value of the thing supported, that is, the 
government. 

This, in practical life, is not an inventoriable 
asset, hence every taxed man is to that extent 
a poorer man. If many men are taxed for the 
purpose of getting value with which to pay 
bounties to a few men, then the many men 
are poorer and the few men are richer. The 


POLITICS FOP PRUDENT PEOPLE. 


149 


country is poorer to the extent of the cost of 
the transfer, and many men are discriminated 
against in order that a few may be pampered. 
Just as there are men who believe these things 
as to taxation, so there are men who believe 
that the thing called money can he made ad¬ 
vantageously to serve other purposes than the 
facilitation of exchanges. This is likewise an 
error. But for this error money would not 
be a question in POLITICS AT ALL, AS IT 
SHOULD NOT BE. Money has but this one 
function . If all our houses, our lots, and our 
merchandise could be cut into forms and values 
equal to the smallest things that we exchange, 
and if these forms could be paid over the coun¬ 
ter, we should need no money. 

Of course these huge houses and things of 
great value cannot be thus handed over the coun- 
ter, but we do exchange these things notwith¬ 
standing their size and their inability to be 
handed over the counter. If house A were just 
as valuable as house B, they could be exchanged 
without a dollar of the thing called money. 
But where two houses differ in value, the differ¬ 
ence must be adjusted in some way. So with 
all things that we exchange. They are not 
equally valuable. To provide for this adjust¬ 
ment of balances and to facilitate exchanges 


150 POLITICS FOR PUUDENT PEOPLE. 

generally we have caused to exist a medium 
called money. Of course this money itself is 
sometimes held hy people who have given value 
for it, hence, if it does not intrinsically possess 
value it must possess exchange value, else, they 
would not have given value for it. If money 
with absolute certainty can possess and retain 
this exchange value, it need not possess intrin¬ 
sic value. To assure this exchange value, 
money possessing intrinsic value is preferred. 
By intrinsic value is meant that for the thing 
out of which the money is made, regardless of 
its character as money, labor will voluntarily 
exchange itself. 

This kind of money possesses both intrinsic 
and exchange value, and that commodity whose 
intrinsic value is least liable to change, which 
at the same time is otherwise most suitable for 
the purpose, is preferred ; and out of this com¬ 
modity governments create their coins, and cer¬ 
tain weights and sizes of these coins are called 
the standard or measure of values in our ex¬ 
changes. It is clear that some one metal must 
he preferable to any other, and it is likewise 
clear that more than one will create compli¬ 
cation, uncertainty, and confusion. Having 
established a certain size and weight of any 
certain metal as the standard (gold being the 


POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 151 

best now known), we for further convenience 
issue paper bills having no intrinsic value, but 
whose exchange value is guaranteed and main¬ 
tained by their redeemability in gold at the 
pleasure of the holder. 

These bills could be redeemed in anything 
else that was equally acceptable to the people 
as a non-fluctuating standard possessing in¬ 
trinsic value. 

Of course, when these bills are in circulation, 
the coin held for their redemption is locked up 
capital, i. e., labor product that draws no in¬ 
terest. 

If the exchange or circulating value could 
be otherwise assured the locked-up coin might 
be used in the arts or put out at interest and 
thus made productive. 

Hitherto the government has coined all 
money as its constitutional prerogative, and 
since the war between the states it has issued 
bills redeemable in coin. The government can 
with propriety establish a standard for ex¬ 
changes, just as it establishes a standard for 
weights and measures, but there the govern¬ 
ment functions should stop. It should not be 
a bank of issue. The circulating medium is a 
thing needed in business, and save as the gov¬ 
ernment collects taxes and pays out what is 


152 POLITICS Foil PPUDENT PEOPLE. 

due for debts, or to its servants, it has no need 
for and should have nothing to do with money 
at all. 

The amount of money should be regulated 
by the business needs, and, were our civiliza¬ 
tion higher than it is, the character and quality 
of it could also be regulated by business needs. 
As things now are the government must take 
a hand in regulating uniformity and stability; 
but there it should stop. Even as our civiliza¬ 
tion now is, business needs should regulate the 
amount per capita. The amount that is 
needed per capita is that amount, as nearly as 
may be, above which checks and drafts are 
usually used in current exchanges. For ex¬ 
ample, if for debts above $25 checks are 
usually used, a medium equal to that amount 
per capita would be practically sufficient. 

But, if business required more, there should 
be a way to meet this requirement, the govern¬ 
ment having nothing to do with it except to 
supervise the character and uniformity. Even 
this governmental function may some day be 
unnecessary. 

Can we provide such a system ? It is pro¬ 
posed that the basis for the circulating me¬ 
dium be the thing that is taxed , namely, the 
fixed property of the country. But how, it 


POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 


153 


maybe asked? Under the proposed system 
each congressional district, or as many as may 
be required, is to have a collector to assess 
fixed property and collect the tax therefrom. 
The fixed property is really the proper basis 
for a circulating medium, provided it can be 
made such in some practical manner. It has 
as yet been impossible, however, to devise a 
currency system disassociated entirely from 
gold or some other metal to represent labor pro¬ 
duct. Fiat money propositions there have been 
in great abundance, but to these no credence 
has been given by the most conservative men. 

Unfortunately for the United States they 
instituted a system of bimetallism, com¬ 
posed of both gold and silver, which has 
caused iniquitous and unwise legislation di¬ 
rected towards maintaining a parity between 
the two at a fixed ratio. The natural laws of 
production, demand, and supply having caused 
silver to decline in the units of labor more than 
gold has declined, there has arisen a disposi¬ 
tion upon the part of persons who are in debt 
to force the standard down to the level of 
silver, hoping thereby to pay debts contracted 
on a ffold basis with value reduced to a silver 
basis, thus profiting the debtor to the extent 
of the difference between the labor value of 


154 POLITICS FOP PRUDENT PEOPLE. 

silver and gold. To this perfidious policy the 
producers of silver have given their aid in the 
hope that the product of their mines might 
thereby be enhanced. In extenuation of this 
effort it was held that silver had been discrim¬ 
inated against and thus, as it were, “ stricken 
down ” by the hand of might from its pre¬ 
vious monetary standard. Of course all 
these propositions were the result of either 
ignorance or disingenuousness, or both, and 
savored very much of open repudiation to the 
extent of the difference in value caused by nat¬ 
ural conditions. All obligations created since 
1879, when gold payments were resumed, are 
gold obligations, and justice demands gold pay¬ 
ments. Before that date silver and gold, at 
sixteen to one, were about equally valuable, 
hence, silver having declined, gold alone, or its 
equivalent, subserves the ends of justice. 

It requires no argument to show that gold 
has not advanced in labor units, but that 
silver has declined, and that said decline in the 
value of silver is due to natural causes only— 
simply supplying demand. 

In 1870 there was produced of silver 
$51,575,000 ; in 1893 the product was 
$208,000,000. Thus in about twenty years the 
output of silver was increased over 400 per 


POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 


155 


cent. In 1870 the gold output was $106,850,- 
000; in 1893 it was $155,000,000. Now if 
the supply of a commodity is multiplied by 
four, its price cannot remain the same unless 
the demand for that commodity is also 
multiplied by four. Gold, on the contrary, 
gained in production only about 50 per cent 
in these twenty years, or less than 3 per cent 
per year, which is about equal to the increase 
in population; hence the supply of gold has 
increased only in the ratio of the increased de¬ 
mand, and not in excess of that demand, as is 
the case with silver. Just here lies a principle 
applicable to all exchange media. Their value, 
like all things else in nature, is subject to 
change . From this unavoidable change more 
complication must result with two commodities 
than with one. This is the reason why one 
only , and that the one that is least liable to 
change, should be used. If more than one, 
why not a hundred or any number? From 
this certainty of change, all “ time ” contracts 
must be somewhat uncertain; but fortunately 
gold has fluctuated very little. The object is 
to insure justice. This means that the money 
paid must be just as valuable—no more nor 
no less—as the money borrowed. Assuming 
labor to be the ultimate basis of all wealth, all 


156 POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 

commodities in time will fluctuate in labor 
value, lienee there must always be some risk in 
time contracts. Even if money were altogether 
eliminated, and Mr. A. should buy Mr. B.’s 
house, agreeing to pay him therefor, ii\ ten 
years, another particular house or a certain 
piece of land, who would absolutely know that 
the exchange value of either would be the 
same in units of labor as at the time the 
deal was made? Who knows that 25 - 1 8 q 
grains of gold will in ten years exchange for 
as much labor as they now do ? Still, experience 
shows that gold has in recent years fluctuated 
less than any other commodity now available 
and suitable, and under a properly devised 
and regulated “ promissory ” or paper-money 
system there can be no question as to the 
supply of gold being sufficient for the 
needs of the world. In fact, the recent in¬ 
creased production of gold points rather to its 
decline than to its advance in labor units. 
Under such a system not more than one-fifth, 
or perhaps one-tenth, of the entire exchange 
medium need exist in gold, and even this would 
be locked-up coin for purposes of ultimate re¬ 
demption. But, be this as it may, it would 
affect all the world alike, and the world could 
agree on a substitute and adjust existing con- 


POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 


157 


tracts to that substitute, either up or down, 
whenever conditions became oppressive and 
the urgency sufficiently great to justify said 
substitute. Some one commodity, for which 
labor will exchange itself and which is least 
liable to fluctuate, should he used as the stand¬ 
ard. Having this standard fixed and passed 
upon by the government, and causing the 
government’s interposition there to end, we 
can devise a currency system based on the 
fixed property of the country ultimately re¬ 
deemable in gold suited to the demands of 
business, absolutely flexible, elastic, sound, and 
stable, thus avoiding the uncertainty, caprice, 
and legislative folly of trying to maintain two 
standards for exchange. 

When any number, or any one man, for that 
matter, desire to start a hank, let them or him 
do so and issue money to the extent of the 
assessed value, free of mortgage, of their or 
his fixed property on the books of the said 
district collector, provided that said banker 
deposit with said collector ten or twenty per 
cent in gold, as the case may be, of the total 
issue of money. 

This gold margin might be kept in the 
vaults of the bank, open to inspection, by the 


158 


POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 


holders of its notes; but in the beginning it 
might assure greater satisfaction for it to be 
deposited with the government’s agent. The 
simplicity and security of this system is obvious. 
The government agent would, of course, stamp 
all money issued as a part of an authorized 
issue equal to whatever the fixed property, free 
of encumbrance, was assessed at on his books. 
This money would he a prior claim on this 
property, and the gold would be the margin 
for additional safety and for the redemption of 
such notes (which would he few) as would be 
presented for redemption. In this way the 
fixed property of the country could be practi¬ 
cally and safely converted into the exchange 
medium as it was wanted. Whenever it was 
wanted it would prompt men to go into the 
business and issue it, hence the quantity would 
be regulated by business needs and the quality 
would he passed upon by the government. Of 
course any such banking system presupposes 
that the government collect its taxes on fixed 
property, otherwise the government would have 
to maintain a department simply to assess prop¬ 
erty for banking purposes. But the desirable¬ 
ness of obtaining its revenue from fixed property 
only, and this additional banking advantage, 
would be cogent arguments for the adoption of 


POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 159 

the system as a whole. If this plan of issuing 
money were left to the state and local assessors, 
it would lack character and not be even nation¬ 
ally, much less world-widely, accepted. If 
money were not the standard by which other 
values are measured, and if its value could be 
as readily ascertained as the value of merchan¬ 
dise can be, then any person might issue it 
who issues merchandise ; and the government 
should no more issue it than it issues merchan¬ 
dise. As things now stand either the govern¬ 
ment must issue, or supervise or regulate those 
who do issue. There are some well-grounded 
objections to the government as a hank of 
issue. Among these are, 1st. Financial schemes 
and theories on the part of congressmen, who 
are not usually business men, directed towards 
subserving other ends than simply the facilita¬ 
tion of business exchanges, which function alone 
money possesses. 2d. Temptation upon the 
part of speculators to deplete the gold reserve 
for the purpose of profiting by the govern¬ 
ment’s necessity of replenishing it. 3d. The 
quantity per capita nor the uniformity of its 
distribution cannot be as well regulated. 

On the other hand the advantage of a gov¬ 
ernment issue is character , uniformity , and 
stability . Now, this latter absolutely vital 


160 POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 

feature cannot otherwise be satisfactorily sub¬ 
served except by bank issues on government 
bonds, or by bank issues on fixed property as 
herein set forth. Since government bonds are 
not a government blessing, and since, they 
cannot be issued simply to provide a basis for 
the circulating medium, there remains no safe 
and feasible bank plan except the fixed prop¬ 
erty bank plan. Silver being suitable for 
subsidiary coinage or “ change,” any bank 
authorized to issue money could present silver 
bullion to the mints and have it coined to the 
extent of an agreed small percentage of its au¬ 
thorized issue, and to be redeemable in gold 
the same as said issue. It would be of no ma¬ 
terial consequence what the intrinsic value of 
these subsidiary coins should be. This adopted, 
and the two politicial issues that cause greatest 
uncertainty to business and industry, namely, 
the tariff and the currency, would be absolutely 
settled. Any issue of money based upon bonds 
is but an issue based on fixed property by a 
process , because the bonds are principally 
secured by fixed property. 


POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 


161 


CHAPTER VII. 

Practical application of Phronocracy—Wealth supports all 
progress—If invested for interest gain, accumulations are 
beneficial to all—Fitness against unfitness as applied to 
wealth and poverty—Artificially provided work not 
beneficial—Long hours of labor and short hours—Inter¬ 
ference not beneficial—More facility and work, the more 
wealth and comfort—Self-supporting immigration benefi¬ 
cial—Any co-operative system must be world-wide—The 
three essential measures proposed by Phronocracy—Taxa¬ 
tion on fixed property only, the only just tax—Cumulative 
taxation on estates privately enjoyed will not curtail ac¬ 
cumulation—How collected—Voting and representation 
based upon actual contribution to government the only 
just system—Foe of reformation a friend of revolution. 


We have now to consider briefly a few 
thoughts on work, wages, inability to get em¬ 
ployment, and the like ; also the practical ap¬ 
plication of the propositions herein set forth. 

“ In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat 
bread.” Certainly this command is true unless 
bread be eaten by the sweat of the face or 
faces of another man or other men. If it is 
true that, if there existed but one man on 
earth, he would have to get his living or die, it 
is equally true that, when there are a million or 


162 


POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 


a billion, they must get their living or die. 
Those who cannot must be supported by the 
others. All co-operative measures, whether 
looking to nationalization of crude media, 
transformed media, factories, means of trans¬ 
portation, or all of these, are simply different 
forms of giving their living to those who can¬ 
not or will not get it for themselves. 

If not this at bottom, then what is the ob¬ 
ject ? If all men were equally well condi¬ 
tioned there would be no such propositions, 
for they would be absolutely useless. These 
measures are commendable enough, and are 
usually prompted by noble sentiments ; but the 
question is, are they really for the best ? It is 
painful to see any living being suffer; but we 
know that much suffering cannot be avoided 
whilst disease is an incident to life. 

Still, with good intentions, it is desired to 
make suffering as bearable as possible; but 
temporary relief often comes at the expense 
of ultimate grief. We hear of Industrial 
Slavery. By this is meant that the wages of 
labor are insufficient to support life. What do 
we mean by wages ? The wages of the prim¬ 
itive man was the fruit, roots, herbs, bugs, 
beetles, fish, or game he secured or captured. 

Under our industrial system, which is what 


POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 163 

it is because, all influences considered, it is 
best, wages should be that part of the product 
which remains after deducting the crude 
material, interest, maintenance, and the like. 
Is it that on the average ? The industrial sys¬ 
tem cannot be destroyed without almost an 
immediate lapse into barbarism. It might, of 
course, be altered so that each should con¬ 
tribute what he could, and all obtain what they 
desire, provided enough were produced for all 
to obtain what they desire. The aggregate 
would not be greater than all its factors or 
parts, hence, unless more were produced than 
now, that is, unless all poor producers were 
made good producers, the aggregate would 
be no more than now ; and we see 
that if all present wealth were divided it 
would be insufficient to yield better conditions 
to all to an extent exceeding about $30 per 
year, or ten cents per day. The reason of all 
this is, that “ all ” means so many. When we 
see a hundred men getting wages equal to 
$100 per day, as hundreds do, and one 
thousand getting $10 per day, as thousands 
do, and millions getting only $1 per day, as 
millions do—why is this? Coming down to 
hard facts, is it not because of their relative 
excellence, all things considered ? If not, what 


164 POLITICS POE PBUDENT PEOPLE. 

is the ultimate explanation ? As said a great 
writer, “ Most men are round pegs in square 
holes.” It is true that many men do not get 
into that line of productiveness that suits them 
best; but why do they not ? 

They have not the opportunity, say many 
co-operators; but why? Nothing happens by 
chance; there are causes for all things. True, 
some men gain or lose by causes they know not 
of, and for which they are not responsible, but 
this cannot be avoided unless we change nature. 

By the same working out of natural law, and 
by the inevitable result of fitness against un¬ 
fitness—which in the ultimate bottoms it all, 
and is the explanation of it all—those who 
have the wealth got it; and by these same work- 
ings-out they are liable to keep the far greater 
part of it; and if they let it out for interest it 
is better that they should keep it. Wealth 
must not only be accumulated, but it must be 
taken care of, or it will perish. Those who are 
fit to accumulate are usually fit to keep and 
preserve. In our present industrial or par¬ 
tially industrial state, adaption is not com¬ 
plete, and will not be for a long period. 
Under our present system so-called wages are 
regulated by the productiveness of labor, by 
supply and demand, by the standard of living, 


POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 165 

and, to a certain extent, by the efficiency of 
labor organization. Now, these influences and 
the facility for production being the same, then 
higher wages means higher-priced products. 
True, wages may advance in a certain line, and 
yet products may decline, as we have seen, but 
the decline is due to the facility. 

The increased wage-rates tend to increase 
the price, but, if lower, then certain it is that 
facility has not only counteracted this tendency, 
but exceeded it. Now, increased facility means 
not only cheaper things, but more and better 
things. 

O 

Advancing civilization causes demand for 
these things, and this demand tends to keep up 
the price of labor notwithstanding the cheap¬ 
ness that the facility ensures. This is what 
makes the life of a civilized man better than a 
savage. 

Other things, therefore, being equal , higher 
wage-rates cause higher-priced products, hence 
wages are about relative to the price of pro¬ 
ducts. 

If all wa^es and interest were doubled, all 
prices would be doubled, facility remaining the 
same. What then signifies the term “ Industrial 
Slavery ” ? It really means that those who are 
rich do not give to the poor whatever they de 


166 . POLITICS FOP PRUDENT PEOPLE. 

sire beyond what their labor enables them to 
get in the struggle for existence. Every phase 
of co-operative endeavor, therefore, is a form 
of charity from the rich to the poor, for, all 
things considered , higher wages means higher- 
priced products; hence more products cannot 
be had simply by higher wages. It is only 
relatively , not actually, higher wages that 
enable the recipient to secure more of life 
comforts. However, the more that facility 
reduces prices, and the more that civilized de¬ 
mand gives occupancy to labor, the more com¬ 
modities will labor buy. 

Unless people work and learn to live oft* of 
the wages they get, they must be supported 
by something akin to if not identical with 
charity, or they will die. The term u false 
system of society ” means that a true system 
of society would be one in which those who 
have must give the means of life to those who 
have not. To say “ Give them opportunity ” 
is but another form of saying give them bread ; 
though indirect and evasive, it means in effect 
the same thing. To say “ Provide them with 
work ” is but another form of saying the same 
thing in effect. To give a man an opportunity 
to move or to transform a thing that it is pref¬ 
erable to leave where and in the shape it is, is 


POLITICS FOP PPUDENT PEOPLE. 167 

but to give him bread by a process. True, 
this process sometimes tends to prevent malin- 
gery, but it works an inevitable loss. To create 
the state as a supplier of work is but to in¬ 
crease the loss and invite dishonesty, misappro¬ 
priation, and outrage upon the most deserving. 
The state cannot wisely nor safely be made a 
gratuitous giver of work, and if so, this would 
result in answerable and reactive damage. 

It would tend also to encourage unfrugality, 
because, knowing that he could get a gratuity 
job, a man would be less energetic in a regu¬ 
lar job, and less frugal with what he received 
from the regular job. It is so with all phases 
of the struggle for life. Make the means avail- 
able easily , and the difficult means—to-wit, 
work—will be to a greater extent shunned. 

Men have no more right to force other men 
to give them a chance to more things, or rather 
to work, than to force them to give the pro¬ 
ducts of work. Men may voluntarily do either. 
Much complaint is also made regarding “ long 
hours of labor.” This too had better go in 
its direct, natural way. It will go so in the 
end, or an equivalent will be reached. 

Other things being equal, that is, facility, 
energy, etc., etc., being the same, no man, wo¬ 
man, nor child, nor animal, nor steam engine can 


168 POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 

produce in eight hours as much as in ten hours. 
True, with facility sufficient, a man may do as 
much in one hour as in one month, but it is the 
facility , not the shorter hours, that accomplishes 
the increased result. Then, given the . same 
condition (facility, energy, and the like), short 
hours means less product than long hours, hence 
in the end less pay or higher prices for the 
product, he it what it may. If facility and the 
utilization of other forms of energy should (as 
they may) enable us to produce in four hours per 
day enough wealth to make access to it as easy 
as it now is, that would be well; but if, under 
these advanced conditions of facility, we yet 
worked eight hours, we should produce still 
more wealth, and that would be better, ensur¬ 
ing, as it would, still cheaper access and a still 
higher standard of life. 

It is energy that moves crude forms into use¬ 
ful forms. Be that energy exerted by a man 
or by a device that man invents to utilize other 
energy, the principle is the same: more work , 
more wealth , and the more wealth the more 
happiness, if access to it at reasonable interest 
rates is assured. A great error is often made 
by well-disposed people who are humane and 
philanthropic, in supposing that all who are 
less well conditioned than themselves are se - 


POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 169 

riously dissatisfied and aggrieved. The vast 
majority are reasonably well satisfied. They 
often enjoy their poor surroundings quite as 
well as the better conditioned do their better 
surroundings. These who do not, strive to do 
better, and usually succeed. Of course there is 
much misery ; but much discontent comes from 
the interference, agitation, and intermeddling 
of well-disposed co-operators who fail to recog¬ 
nize the fact that men of low attainments and 
low aspirations do not clamor for high attain¬ 
ments, and are not seriously concerned about 
bettering their state. This must be so, or rev¬ 
olution would be certain. 

Better than all co-operations, all charity, and 
all isms is to teach the masses to work when¬ 
ever they can and as energetically as they can, 
and to conserve as much of their labor as they 
can. 

Just as the savage pursues game whenever 
he can and catches it whenever he can, and 
just as a more enlightened savage causes his 
arrow to speed through the air and kill the 
deer if he can, so the laborer in civilized life 
must work when he can, and, if he would be 
the more certain to avoid want, conserve as 
much as he can. 

If co-operation, either complete or partial, 


1T0 POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 

were introduced in America, if it altered present 
conditions much, it would have to be world¬ 
wide, else it could not long endure. If it 
favored, as it is of course intended that it should, 
the poorer specimens, they would flock to 
America from the four quarters of the earth. 
Movable wealth would of course be taken from 
America, and fixed wealth would soon decay, 
because these poor specimens would not keep 
up repairs in their new homes (where, under 
the co-operative system, reward would not di¬ 
rectly follow effort) any better, if as well, as 
they did in their old homes, where reward did 
follow effort. Their object in coming to 
America would he to get the benefit of the 
better labor of better men. If so-called crude 
natural media were accessible in America in any 
other way than they are now accessible (that is, 
by the exchange of that labor product which 
equals their value), this inducement alone would 
invite the maimed, the halt, and the blind from 
the earth’s remotest hounds unto the ocean’s 
loneliest shore. As has been stated, all natural 
media that are related to man as the sea is to the 
fish, or as the air is to the bird, or as the water, 
the air, or the sunshine is related to man, are 
now accessible to man just as they are acces¬ 
sible to the fish, the bird, or the man. 


POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 171 

Some natural media, however (all that are 
owned), are differently related to man, and man 
to them, than the fish to the water, or the bird 
to the air. What is this difference ? The ex¬ 
penditure of labor. For such media, then, as 
are possessed by man by labor that he has ex¬ 
pended for them, or by labor product that he has 
exchanged for them, man must have an equiva¬ 
lent if he yields them up to others. Fish and 
birds do not possess certain water or air by 
reason of expended labor applicable to them¬ 
selves only, as many men possess other crude 
media. 

If, then, these media are possessed by labor, 
so are all media that have been “ moved ” into 
other forms. To give access to any implies 
equal right to all, so that complete co-operation is 
quite as reasonable as partial co-operation, aye 
much more so, because it is consistent, and is 
bottomed on a principle applicable to all things 
alike. Man is in no sense differently related 
to so-called crude natural media than to every¬ 
thing in the world for which labor will exchange 
itself. There is no reasonable middle ground 
between a competitive society and a complete 
co-operative society. 

One or the other outright is the thing, and 
either must be practically world-wide, as com- 


172 


POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 


petition always has been. If complete co¬ 
operation would not produce retrogression, 
it would be by all odds the system to adopt. 
With those who believe that the earth was 
manufactured as a habitat for man it is useless 
to argue; time and reflection will alter this 
conception, hut meantime its retention leads to 
many erroneous conclusions. But to what con¬ 
clusion does this view primarily lead? If the 
earth was manufactured for all men, then a 
certain part of it was manufactured for each 
man. When, therefore, there were one million 
men on the earth, more of it was then manu¬ 
factured for each man than when there are, as 
now, nearly two billion men on the earth. 
Obviously, then, for the latter number to 
thrive as well as the former number, they must 
convert, by energy, more crude material into 
utilizable forms. Then each man should have 
been manufactured so as to be able to convert 
correspondingly more material into these useful 
forms. Each man, therefore, at all stages of 
human life on the earth, should have been 
made capable of possessing and retaining his 
particular share, else the plan of manufacture 
fails of its purpose. If each man has his share, 
said share must he very much less than many 
think they ought to have ; hence, if the earth 


POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 173 

was well manufactured for them, they were 
poorly manufactured for it. There is a pal¬ 
pable deficiency somewhere, for the shares 
differ. 

We think each man has about his proper 
share. What is his share? All he can get 
relatively to the getting powers of his fellow- 
men. What are these u getting” powers? 
All the influences that have operated from the 
ultimate till this very hour. If men cannot 
get enough crude media or transformed media 
by their own powers to live, their fellows must 
give to them, else they must die. 

There are no more naturally inherited crude 
media than transformed media. Both are the 
result of effort equaling their value from the 
very start, and both gain or lose by social con¬ 
ditions in identically the same way. 

A few words as to immigration will suffice. 
Any self-sustaining immigrant is as much bene¬ 
fit to any country as a good citizen is to any 
country. Wherever a man is, if he produces 
more than he consumes, and conserves the sur¬ 
plus of what he produces, he is a benefit; if not, 
he is not a benefit, for if not, he has to be sup¬ 
ported by others. To settle the immigration 
question we have but to ask, are men self-sus¬ 
taining at their old home ? if so, they will likely 


174 


POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 


be at their new home, and if so at their new 
home, they are a benefit. Let all such come. 

We have now to consider the practical appli¬ 
cation of our proposed measures. It is not pro¬ 
posed to change men, hence, not to materially 
change their societies. We have proposed 
four measures that may be considered radical. 

1st. We have proposed that the state shall 
do nothing from which it is practical to derive 
revenue. 

2d. We have proposed that all taxation shall 
be direct on fixed property for revenue only, 
and that an additional cumulative tax shall be 
imposed on private residences, country seats, 
villas, and the like. 

3d. We have proposed that suffrage shall be 
based on one vote for each $100 paid in 
residential rent, and one for every $20 paid 
in residental taxation. 

4th. That fixed property and gold coin shall 
be the basis of currency to be issued by banks. 

It is not proposed that either of these pro¬ 
portions shall be unalterable as to amounts, 
means, or methods. The principles involved 
only are to be steadfastly recommended. 

If the state ceased to do anything that it 
now does from which it collects a revenue, this 
would mean that the plant, property, or ma- 


POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 175 

chinery should be sold to private individuals, and 
that they should thereafter perform the service. 
Of course the times and conditions must not 
be ignored. It might be said, No, rather should 
the state cease to charge than that it should 
sell its plant and property and permit indivi¬ 
duals to charge. Then the state should employ 
vast labor to perform vast duties, as the case 
may be, and turn the products over to all for 
nothing. Depending on the extent to which 
this is done will accumulated wealth become 
less, and taxes and rents and interest be higher. 
The service must be paid for in some way, for 
something cannot be got for nothing. 

Now, as to the second proposition, that all 
taxes shall be on fixed property only, and for 
revenue only, and an additional cumulative 
tax on privately enjoyed non-interest-producing 
property. How shall this he practically done? 
Simply by the establishment of collectors in 
every congressional district or as many as may 
be needed. 

They shall assess the fixed property only, 
which means, farms, city lots, houses, bridges, 
railway tracks, and all fixed forms of wealth or 
property, at their value for use, and collect 
therefrom what the government may need. 
As this system is applied, all other systems shall 


176 POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 

be discontinued, time being given for adjust¬ 
ment to the charge. The additional amount 
proposed to be imposed on privately held es¬ 
tates is a rate per hundred equal to the one- 
millionth part of the value of the said estate. 
This would be 10 cents per hundred extra on a 
hundred-thousand-dollar estate, $1 extra on 
a million-dollar estate, and $5 extra per hundred 
on a five-million-dollar private estate. This 
might be subject to change in amount. 

Some controversy might arise as to what 
class of estates come under this head, but 
the rate would only apply, so as to be materi¬ 
ally felt, to so few private estates that there 
would be but little occasion for cavil. It is 
not difficult to determine which are estates thus 
occupied, and which are estates rented or leased 
for interest. It is not the purpose of this levy 
to be as drastic as possible, but only to prevent 
unreasonably large properties from being non- 
productively held. It may be said that even 
this tends to reduce accumulation. Yes, such 
is directly the case, but not seriously so. Still, 
if the cumulative rate is applied to a one-mil- 
lion-dollar estate, and another million-dollar es¬ 
tate is put out at interest, there is a gain to the 
community over and above what there would be 
if a two-million-dollar estate were held for pri- 


POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 177 

vate enjoyment without a cumulative rate. For 
example : The one-million-dollar estate would 
be taxed $1 per hundred more than without 
the cumulative rate. The other one-million- 
dollar estate would bring in at least four or five 
per cent interest, leaving a net gain of from 
three to four per cent interest over and above 
that which would accrue if the two-million- 
dollar estate were held unproductively. 

Now a few words more as to the third pro¬ 
position, that voters shall be apportioned on the 
basis of one for each $100 residential rent paid 
by the tenant, and one for each $20 residential 
taxation paid by the owner. Justice is claimed 
for this on the ground, 

1st. That if a citizen is so worthless as not 
to have a residence, he is not fit to vote. 

2d. That it is the only practical way of 
establishing equitable relativity as regards the 
rights of men to participate in government. 
Is $100 to the rental and $20 to the land¬ 
lord an unjust relative basis? To answer 
that we must ascertain some reasonable average 
rates between rent and taxation. When a 
house is rented for $100, does all taxation on 
it amount to more or less than one-fifth of that 
sum on the average ? 

Whatever this basis may be determined to 


178 POLITICS FOE PRUDENT PEOPLE. 

be, that is the relative ratio between the land¬ 
lord and the tenant voter. Localities may 
differ somewhat in this respect, but the differ¬ 
ence will not be great enough to cause injus¬ 
tice that is worth considering. 

This system would to a great extent annihi¬ 
late bossism in great cities and give to the 
rural districts and frugal city residents almost 
entire control of public affairs. This will be a 
great benefit to all, even to the wo?i-voters, for 
public affairs will be more honestly adminis¬ 
tered. No man of any self-respect need be a 
no? 2 -voter under this system, and those of no 
self-respect ought not to vote. The benefit 
and justice will lie in the fact of giving those 
who pay most towards governmental support a 
voice or voices in proportion to their contri¬ 
butions. Qualified voters should be registered 
on the books of the collectors from three to 
six months before any vote can be recorded. 
These, however, are matters of detail. If this 
system were adopted, vast improvements could 
be made on the methods now in use of casting 
and counting votes. A foe of reformation is 
a friend of revolution. 

As to the essence of the proposition to cu¬ 
mulatively tax privately held estates, be it said 
that it is simply proposing to do by gradual 


POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 


179 


reformation that which would be done, if con¬ 
ditions were sufficiently strained, by wealth- 
destroying and bloody revolution. 

If a few men should hold away from or out 
of access to the millions, all, half, or even a 
large part of the property of the world, not per¬ 
mitting them to use it by payment of interest, 
which under the rights of an owner or owners 
they could do, it is probable that things would 
be revolutionized by the unfortunate interven¬ 
tion of the vis major . 

Wealth held and offered for use at interest 
rates (even to the limit the traffic will bear, 
which is almost always beyond the current 
rate) will cause no such calamity. To apply 
this to vacant lots, because improvements are 
not budded on them, involves, first, great in¬ 
justice and a dissipation of wealth that is 
caused to be invested before it can be prop¬ 
erly used by proper demand; and, secondly, 
impracticability in determining whether the 
improvement that the tax demands is to be a 
fence, a shanty, a brick house, a stone house, 
a hotel, or a castle, or a depot, or a factory, or 
a what f In practice it would likely be the 
last-mentioned. 

Of course, cumulative taxation on these pri¬ 
vate seats, villas, residences, and the like, tends 


180 POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 

to prevent their construction, which is bad ; but 
it likewise tends to cause this wealth to be in¬ 
vested for interest , which is good. Of course, 
rich men may throw away and scatter to the 
four winds, if they like, all the interest derived 
from their properties; but this they do not now 
do, nor are they likely ever to do it, hence it is 
useless to try to prevent it if we could, for w r e 
could not, if we would, to a greater extent than 
to discourage vast non-productive residential 
investments . The practicability of a measure 
must be taken into account as well as its de¬ 
sirableness. 

The gist of the whole situation is, that in¬ 
creased production and conservation, which 
mean increased accumulation, are necessary to 
the betterment of mankind ; that they are the 
only remedy. 

Furthermore, co-operation cannot bring about 
that result as well as competition . When 
the poet wrote : “ Ill fares the land, to hasten¬ 
ing ills a prey, where wealth accumulates and 
men decay,” he doubtless failed to reflect that 
otherwise “ health,” or certainly “plenty,” 
could not have “ cheered the laboring swain ” 
in “ Sweet Auburn, loveliest village of the 
plain.” Men do not “ decay ” when they ac¬ 
cumulate, but when they dissipate wealth. 


POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 181 

One of the greatest errors that the masses 
or the advocates of co-operation make is the 
belief that the rich seek to grind down and 
oppress the poor. 

Most any rich man would prefer to see the 
poor in better condition than they now are. But 
to give their wealth to a few poor men makes 
these few rich, and to give it to all the poor 
(who are equally entitled to it) makes no bet¬ 
terment that is worth considering; and its con¬ 
sumption would reduce all to poverty. In 
advocating competition as against co-operation 
it is not because enmity is cherished towards 
the poor, hut because it is honestly believed 
that that system will be better for the poor, 
because it will result in greater production and 
conservation of wealth, thus making access to 
it by the poor easier and cheaper . 

The next best thing to owning wealth is to 
have cheap access to it. Under any of the pro¬ 
posed complete or partial co-operative systems 
access could only he had either to crude medium 
(land), or to transformed medium (wealth), by 
preferential discrimination or at the price that 
is forced by the ratio of demand to supply. 
It may be asked, can these or similar principles 
ever he established ? There were four million 
farm-owners in America in 1890. There are 


182 POLITICS FOE PRUDENT PEOPLE. 

at least three million conservative and property- 
owning city residents. These are largely over 
half the votes cast in 1892. 

If all whose personal interest is subserved, 
to say nothing of the general welfare, would 
support these or kindred measures, the present 
tendency toward communism, socialism, popu¬ 
lism, land-confiscationism, and other co-opera¬ 
tive schemes tending towards social degenera¬ 
tion and retrogression, would he effectually 
estopped. The longer it is delayed the more 
difficult it will become. 

In the year 1800, by the election of Tlios. 
Jefferson, the era of democracy and universal 
suffrage was practically inaugurated. Even 
then the negroes did not vote, and in a few 
states there remained a small qualification. 
At that time the whole population was less 
than the present population of the state of 
New York, and it was more homogeneous and 
of a higher average character. Had Jefferson 
lived till now he would doubtless have opposed 
universal suffrage. In 1900, after a century 
of trial, it is clear that it does not make the 
condition of the masses better ; hence, it must 
and does make it worse—why ? Because the 
masses are not enable . The exercise of suf¬ 
frage, like everything else, should be a matter 


POLITICS FOR PRUDENT PEOPLE. 183 

of growth into the best practicable standard of 
fitness . 

Co-operators who oppose this are unevolu- 
tioncil and act upon sentiment rather than upon 
sense. If co-operation is ever established, it 
must be by the capables and not by the in- 
capables . Reforms that last are always 
inaugurated and supported by the best and not 
by the worst . 

The best government for primitive men 
was a despotism. The best for men as they 
are now miscellaneously grouped—a few fit 
and many unfit—is one based on relative 
excellence determined by some feasible stand¬ 
ard. The best for men when adjustment is 
complete (before which dissolution may set in) 
will be practically no government , but simply 
the administration of universally recognized 
rules of procedure, under which there will be 
no constraint nor restraint . 66 Things by 

season , seasoned are to their right praise 
and true perfection.” 


THE END. 


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From the press of the Arena Publishing Company. 


Cwo jNfouels of Absorbing Interest. 


Eibert 

Hubbard 

Price, paper , 50 cents ; cloth, $ 1 . 25 . 

FORBES OF HARVARD. 

In “ Forbes of Harvard” Mr. Elbert Hubbard has pro¬ 
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Hrs. 

S. M. H. 
Gardner 

Price, paper , 50 cents', cloth, $ 1 . 25 . 

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For sale by all newsdealers, or sent postpaid by 

Arena Publishing Co., Boston , Mass. 









Frotn the press of the Arena Ptiblishing Company. 


A Stirring Drama of Ular-Iimes. 


Hary 1 

Holland Lee 

Price, paper, 50 cents ; cloth, $ 1 . 25 . 

MARGARET SALISBURY. 

K 

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